House Symbolism and Ancestor Cult in the

Central Anatolian Neolithic

Christopher Fredrik Kvæstad

M.A. thesis in Archaeology

Department of Archaeology, History, Cultural Studies and Religion

University of Bergen

November 2010
To Bergljot

2
Contents
Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................................. 4
List of maps, tables, plates, and figures................................................................................................... 6
Abbreviations .......................................................................................................................................... 8
Chapter I: Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 9
§ 1.1 – Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 9
§ 1.2 – Space and time....................................................................................................................... 11
§ 1.3 – Structure of the thesis ............................................................................................................ 12
Chapter II: Problem formulations and research methods ...................................................................... 14
§ 2.1 – Problem formulations ............................................................................................................ 14
§ 2.2 – Research methods .................................................................................................................. 14
Chapter III: Pervious studies and research ............................................................................................ 17
Chapter IV: Theory of the House and Ancestor Cult ............................................................................ 21
§ 4.1 – Defining ‗house‘ .................................................................................................................... 21
§ 4.2 – The house and the body ......................................................................................................... 23
§ 4.3 – Habitus .................................................................................................................................. 25
§ 4.4 – Transpatial solidarity ............................................................................................................. 25
§ 4.5 – Houses as people ................................................................................................................... 26
§ 4.6 – The ambiguity of food ........................................................................................................... 27
§ 4.7 – The house as an axis mundi ................................................................................................... 28
§ 4.8 – Social implication of death .................................................................................................... 29
§ 4.9 – Rites of passage ..................................................................................................................... 29
§ 4.10 – The ‗good‘ and ‗bad‘ death ................................................................................................. 31
§ 4.11 – The dichotomy of death....................................................................................................... 32
§ 4.12 – Individuality and its problems ............................................................................................. 33
§ 4.13 – The symbolism of the human body ..................................................................................... 34
§ 4.14 – Material culture and ritual ................................................................................................... 34
§ 4.15 – Moving on to the archaeological material ........................................................................... 35
Chapter V: Material remains from Aşıklı Höyük and Çatalhöyük ........................................................ 36
§ 5.1 – Aşıklı Höyük and Çatalhöyük in a Levantine context ........................................................... 36
§ 5.2 – Aşıklı Höyük ......................................................................................................................... 41
§ 5.2.1 – Site history:..................................................................................................................... 41
§ 5.2.2 – Dates ............................................................................................................................... 42
§ 5.2.3 – Burial customs ................................................................................................................ 42
§ 5.2.4 – Hearths............................................................................................................................ 44
§ 5.2.5 – Structures ........................................................................................................................ 46

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 § 5.2.6 – Other material ................................................................................................................. 50
§ 5.3 – Çatalhöyük ............................................................................................................................ 50
§ 5.3.1 – Site history...................................................................................................................... 51
§ 5.3.2 – Dates ............................................................................................................................... 53
§ 5.3.3 – Burial customs ................................................................................................................ 54
§ 5.3.4 – Hearths and Ovens.......................................................................................................... 59
§ 5.3.5 – Structures ........................................................................................................................ 60
§ 5.3.6 – Building 80 ..................................................................................................................... 63
§ 5.3.7 – Paintings ......................................................................................................................... 65
§ 5.3.8 – Moulded features ............................................................................................................ 68
Chapter VI: Discussion ......................................................................................................................... 72
§ 6.1 – The house .............................................................................................................................. 72
§ 6.1.1 – Aşıklı Höyük .................................................................................................................. 74
§ 6.1.2 – Çatalhöyük...................................................................................................................... 77
§ 6.2 – Ancestor cult.......................................................................................................................... 79
§ 6.2.1 – Aşıklı Höyük .................................................................................................................. 79
§ 6.2.2 – Çatalhöyük...................................................................................................................... 80
§ 6.3 – The hearth .............................................................................................................................. 82
§ 6.3.1 – Aşıklı Höyük .................................................................................................................. 83
§ 6.3.2 – Çatalhöyük...................................................................................................................... 83
Chapter VII: Concluding remarks ......................................................................................................... 85
Summary ............................................................................................................................................... 87
Bibliography .......................................................................................................................................... 88

Acknowledgements

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The Neolithic of Central Anatolia has fascinated me since the first time I got introduced to it
at the beginning of my bachelor programme. I have since taken the journey to Turkey two
times; visiting both Çatalhöyük and Aşıklı Höyük. Much can be said about Central Anatolia,
but the stunning beauty of the landscape and the friendliness of the people have undoubtedly
contributed to make this a unique experience.

First of all I want to give my outmost gratitude to my supervisor, Professor Dr. Randi
Haaland, for being both supportive and an almost endless source of knowledge. Even with a
broken arm and you still had the time and energy to invite me to your home to give me
constructive advice in time of need.

Many thanks goes to the people working on the Çatalhöyük Research Project, especially
Dorthe Nistad, who so kindly introduced me to several team members and showed me around
at the site, and Roddy Regan, who gave me a comprehensive and fascinating introduction to
Building 80. I also want to thank the director, Professor Dr. Ian Hodder, for taking the time to
talk to me even while closing down the site for the season.

I also want to thank the people working on the Aşıklı Höyük Project. Especially the director
of the project Professor Dr. Mihriban Özbaşaran and field director Dr. Güneş Duru, for taking
the time to introduce me to the site and welcoming me to the dig house for lunch. I also want
to thank trench assistant Hazal Tuğlu for showing me around at the site and itroducing me to
the practical sides of the excavation.

All misquotes and misspellings are solely my own.

Bergen, November 2010

Christopher Fredrik Kvæsad

5
List of maps, tables, plates, and figures

Maps

Map 1.1 - Satellite photo and overview map of Central Anatolia ....................................................... 11

Tables

Table 1.1 – Periodization and associated excavated sites belonging to the

ECA period ....................................................................................................................... 12

Table 5.1 – Minimum numbers of skeletons excavated at Çatalhöyük ............................................... 58

Table 5.2 – Location of paintings ........................................................................................................ 67

Table 5.3 – Categories for moulded features ....................................................................................... 69

Table 5.4 – Location of features and installations …………………………….............…………….. 70

Table 6.1 – Space/place opposition ...................................................................................................... 72

Plates

Cover – Reconstruction of Çatalhöyük at Museum of Anatolian Civilizations

(photo: Kvæstad, 2010) ......................................................................................................... 1

Plate 5.1 – Stratigraphy of the deep sounding ...................................................................................... 46

Plate 5.2 – Upper left: wall installation on F.2533 (N. wall). Upper

right: Space 373 in the back with oven and ladderpost

marks on wall space 135). Lower left: The hearth in space

135. Lower right: profile of wall plaster layers on F.5014

(eastern wall) .................................................................................................................... 63

Plate 6.1 – Reconstructed (top) and remains (bottom) of houses at

Aşıklı Höyük ..................................................................................................................... 74

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Plate 6.2 – Painted hands and bucrania with horns (installed on

platform) from Building 77 ................................................................................................. 77

Plate 6.3 – A hearth inside structure at Aşıklı Höyük .......................................................................... 82

Figures

Figure 5.1 – Plan of Building 80 .......................................................................................................... 65

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Abbreviations

ECA: Early Central Anatolian (period)

PPN(A,B,C/Final): Pre Pottery Neolithic. Prefixes: E(early), M(middle), L(late)

LN: Late Neolithic

Pers. com. Personal communication by talking with given archaeologists on

site

ÇRP Çatalhöyük Research Project

8
Chapter I: Introduction

“...death hath ten thousand several doors for men to take their exits”

– John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi, 1612

§ 1.1 – Introduction
The Central Anatolian Neolithic has long been seen as the intermediate horizon set between
the initial articulation of the Neolithic way of life in the Fertile Crescent, and its adoption in
Europe. Over the past 25 years of research it has become clear that the Central Anatolian
Neolithic constitutes of a distinct centre of early neolithisation that diverges in some
fundamental respects from that of the Levant, and can not be seen as an offshoot by the latter
(Özdoğan and Başgelen 1999; Düring 2006). The settlements in the Central Anatolian
Neolithic show to a large extent a common cultural horizon in configuration of space, burial
practices, food production, and ideology.

The reason I chose Aşıklı Höyük and Çatalhöyük1 in my thesis is that these settlements give a
good insight of the material culture and ideology in the Neolithic of Central Anatolia. As they
are amongst the largest settlements in the Near Eastern Neolithic, with populations reaching
into the thousands (Moore et al. 2000:4; Hodder and Cessford 2004:17). They illustrate an
intricate picture of the how culture and ideology manifested themselves in the material over
time, resulting in a unique patters of symbolism. This thesis is not meant to be a juxtaposition
of the two sites, nor a comparative analysis of the Neolithic Central Anatolia and the Levant.
The aim is to show how the symbolism of the house affected the ancestor cult and how it was
incorporated within the private sphere. The sites are covering a significant time span of the
Central Anatolian Neolithic - approximately 2200 years - constructing complex societies
based on a unique system of belief manifesting itself in the material culture.

During my work with this thesis I experienced that the house and ancestor cult are more
intimately linked than previously expected. Ancestors were not only buried within the house,
but incorporated and became a part of it. I suggest the reader keep in mind the complexity of
the material culture and that the symbolism and rites connected to it is radically different from

1
Was earlier referred to as Çatal Höyük (for instance by Mellaart works from the 1960‘s), but after the new
excavations started in 1993, the official spelling changed to Çatalhöyük. The same has not been done with Aşıklı
Höyük.

9
perceptions we have in present societies. Things that are at first glance appear to be separate
entities, i.e. the house and the ancestor, become unclear as my symbolic divisions appear
somewhat artificially constructed and unnatural. The ties are close between the house and the
ancestor, so close that they in their time might have been seen as one unit rather than two
separate entities.

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§ 1.2 – Space and time

Map 1.1 - Satellite photo and overview map of Central Anatolia (source: Google Maps /
Wikipedia)

The area of my research is Central Anatolia (marked red in lower left corner – map 1.1),
mainly consisting of the Konya Plain to the west and Cappadocia to the east. The settlements
of Aşıklı Höyük (25 km south-east from Aksaray) and Çatalhöyük (52 km south-east from
Konya) (map 1.1), respectively located on the Konya Plain and in western Cappadocia, are
located approximately 150 km apart from each other. I will present the sites locations more
detailed when approaching the archaeological material in Chapter V.

All dates used in this thesis are calibrated BC. The occupational date for Aşıklı Höyük is 8200
– 7400 BC (Thissen 2002; Hodder and Cessford 2004), and Çatalhöyük (East mound) is 7400
– 6200/6000 BC (Hodder 2006:7; Cessford 2001; Hodder and Cessford 2004), respectively
placing them in the periods ECA II and ECA II/III (see table 1.1). The research undertaken in
Turkish Neolithic archaeology presents Neolithic Anatolia as a potential case of independent

11
neolithisation and emphasises the enormous cultural diversity found in the region, calling for
a new Central Anatolian terminology (Özdoğan 2002). The principal assumption behind this
classification scheme is that the ECA was a distinct geographical and cultural entity,
characterized by internal cultural continuity until the end of the Middle Chalcolithic (c.4000
BC) (Asouti 2006:95).

The Anatolian Neolithic lasted in total from about 3000 years (ca. 8500-5500 BC) (Düring
2006), and produced numerous sites in the region (see ‗Associated sites‘ in table 1.1). My
thesis will only discuss the period from the beginning of the Aşıklı Höyük settlement (8200
BC) to the end of the Çatalhöyük East Mound settlement (6200/6000 BC); the ECA II/III
periods.

ECA periods (cal. BC) Correlation with the Levantine Associated sites
periods
ECA I (Younger Dryas-c.9000) Epipalaeolithic, Pınarbarşı rock-shelter Epipalaeolithic
PPNA/EPPNB burial and hearths
ECA II (~9000-late eight millennium) E/MPPNB-LPPNB Pınarbarşı A, Aşıklı Höyük, Kaltepe,
Can Hasan III, Suberde, Musular,
Çatalhöyük East
ECA III (7000-6000) LPPNB-PPNC-LN Çatalhöyük East, Suberde, Pınarbarşı
B, Erbaba
ECA IV (6000-5500) Early Chalcolithic Çatalhöyük West, Can Hasan I, Köşk
Höyük
ECA V (5500-4000) Middle Chalcolithic Can Hasan I, Güvercinkayası, Köşk
Höyük, Kaltepe upper

Table 1.1 – Periodization and associated excavated sites belonging to the ECA (“Early
Central Anatolian”) period (Asouti 2006:94; Özbaşaran and Buitenhuis 2002)

§ 1.3 – Structure of the thesis

First I will present the problem formulations and research methods I have chosen for my
thesis in chapter II. It consist of the main research question ―How did symbolism and ancestor
cult manifest themselves in the house during the Neolithic of Central Anatolia?” followed by
four sub-questions. In the latter part of chapter II will discuss the methods of researched used
to answer my research questions. In chapter III the general research history will be accounted
for, giving an overview of what work has been done on the subject and the area. In chapter IV
the theoretical framework will be presented through the use of multiple sub-categories: first
clarify the word ‗house‘, thereafter moving on several theories on the house, liminality, death

12
and ancestor cult. In the following chapter V the archaeological material will be discussed,
first by putting the Central Anatolian Neolithic in a Middle Eastern context, then separately
presenting Aşıklı Höyük and Çatalhöyük; discussing location, site history, dates, and material.
In chapter VII will categorically analyse the theories and archaeological material, before
moving on to the final conclusion in chapter VII.

13
Chapter II: Problem formulations and research methods

Problem formulations and methodology is intricately linked together, and therefore I have
chosen to present them in the same chapter. The research questions are set as the premises of
the thesis, and all literature used is in regard to these questions as a base for the thesis. My
research methods are to clarify the methods I have chosen to analyse the material remains,
and which premises I are made to answer the presented research questions.

§ 2.1 – Problem formulations

As the title of this thesis implicates, my research is mainly based on how ancestor cult and
symbolism of the house manifested itself in the archaeological data. I have chosen to split up
the problem formulations in two set of hierarchical questions:

Main Question: How did ancestor cult manifest itself in the house at Aşıklı Höyük and
Çatalhöyük?

Sub-questions:

What expression does the material have that can tell us something about
ancestor rituals?

What role did the ancestors have in the structure and symbolism of the
house?

What links can be made between the present ethnography and the
archaeological material?

I have chosen to keep the problem formulations as a subtle basis throughout my thesis. The
whole structure of this thesis has been constructed with the problem formulations as a
foundation for both interpreting and collection of the theoretical approaches relevant to the
archaeological material I have chosen.

§ 2.2 – Research methods

Although I am dealing with a fixed geographical area of Central Anatolia, there is a need to
distinguish between the two sites I have chosen. This thesis is substantially a theoretical

14
approach to the material, yet I chose to visit Aşıklı Höyük and Çatalhöyük to get a better
understanding of the material I am working with, and talk to the archaeologist working on
site2. This gave me a unique opportunity to comprehend the theory I am working with, and
get a better understanding of certain aspects of the material which is hard to grasp by only
reading the publicised material.

As material culture is loaded with meaning, the ideas and symbolism of prehistory can be
understood through archaeological investigation. I have chosen to pursue the post-processual
archaeological direction, fronted by scholars such as Ian Hodder (Hodder 2000, 1996, 1991,
1991, 1987, 1985), incorporating feminism, Marxism, structuralism, contextualism, etc. The
idea that material culture could be a substitute for written sources in an effort to express
meaning in times of danger or stress (Nistad 2005). In the Processual movement (also knows
as New-Archaeology) starting in the 1960s and 1970s, archaeologists tried to extent the
natural science approach into all areas of the discipline (Rapoport 2006). Even cultural issues
were thought accessible using a philosophy derived from natural science, emphasising general
laws, hypothesis testing, and independence of theory and data. It paid little attention to the
social, and even less, to the symbolic and ideological issues (Hodder 1996:11). Hodders
contextual approach is marked by the understanding of the totality in the relevant
environment, analysing the necessity for discerning the object‘s meaning (Hodder 1991:139).
The context contains all the relevant aspects the symbol interacts with; contextual
archaeology is the recognition that social action and social meaning behind the material
culture can best be understood in context, both cultural and material (Nistad 2005:10).

The use of ethnoarchaeology (formerly known as ―action archaeology‖ or ―living

archaeology‖) is essential to understand and comprehend the context the given object in terms
of symbolism and ritual. Ethnoarchaeology is the combination of two disciplines;
archaeology – recovering recording material remains – and ethnography – the study of human
behaviour and social organization in living societies. Although the use of ethnographic by
interpreting prehistory is not a new approach (e.g. de Jussieu 1723; Peake 1940),
ethnoarchaeology is distinct in its approach by the means of planning an purpose in its study
of the archaeological material (Stiles 1977; London 2000). I do refer to the ethnographic
present to explain and clarify certain aspect of the theoretical approach and the illuminate the
archaeological material I am working with. The use of direct analogy has to be avoided, due

2
First visit to Çatalhöyük was in September 2009. My fieldtrip to Aşıklı Höyük and Çatalhöyük was in August
2010; all my pers. com. references are from this trip.

15
to the great leap in both time and space between the present societies and the archaeological
material. I have tried to use the ethnographic source with great caution, both pointing out
similarities as well as dissimilarities to the archaeological material, to pursuit a nuanced
analysis of the material culture and its context.

16
Chapter III: Pervious studies and research

I will in this chapter present pervious studies and research that is not directly connected to the
sites, as I have chosen to present site history as a separate paragraphs connected to the specific
sites (see § 5.1.1 and § 5.2.1).

In my thesis I have used a wide range of ethnographic sources to illuminate different

characteristics about the house. In anthropology the house has been studied as a social entity
by authors such as Bloch (Bloch 1995; Bloch and Parry 1982), Lévi-Strauss (1987, 1983),
Rapoport (1980, 1969) and Bourdieu (1990b, 1990a, 1977). The book About the house: Lévi-
Strauss and beyond (Carsten and Hugh-Jones 1995) gathers a collection of essays concerning
the house not simply as a physical structure. The focus is on the interrelation on the buildings,
people and ideas, through the means of ethnographic case studies to reveal some different
ways the house come to stand for social groups and represent the world around them.

Hodder‘s The Domestication of Europe (1992) explains domestication as a discourse of

power, and introduces the concepts domus and agrios, a theoretical approach to mans
movement away from nature into culture. Rapoport‘s House forms and culture (1969) deals
with the history of the built environment, an he noted how past history always played
important role in architectural studies. He analysed the complex phenomenon that determine
the form of dwellings, to deal with the broader aspects of house form and the habitat of man.
Architecture & Order, by Parker-Pearson and Richards (1994a), incorporates a range of
interpretation to social space in terms of both ethnography, history and prehistoric societies.
Eliade (1987 [1959]) considered the ‗founding of the world‘ to be an required revelation of
sacred space in terms of a fixed point, an axis mundi, to acquire orientation in the chaos of
homogeneity. Lewis-Williams (2004) uses the term axis mundi to interpret the possibility of
shamanism at Çatalhöyük through its internal structural order.

Hodder has been one of the authors that has publicised an extensive line of works regarding
Çatalhöyük in terms of symbolism and ritual in the archaeological material (2007, 2006;
2004; 2003, 2002, 2000, 1999, 1992). Hodder contextual approach has resulted in several
works, one of the more recent being Çatalhöyük: the leopard's tale - revealing the mysteries
of Turkey's ancient "town" (2006), discussing the symbolism and structure of the site. By
using ethnographic sources, such as the Tikopia (Firth 1936), Hodder approaches the material
culture in a way that would not be possible by solely keeping to the excavated material.

17
The social activities inside the house were of course marked by the daily activities performed
within it (see Hodder and Cessford 2004). The processing and consumption of food, was
indeed a vial part of the inner life of the house. The research on food in society is a rather new
approach to in archaeology. Haaland (2007, 2006) has done some research on the subject in
the context of the middle east, and the symbolism of food, such as the homology between
bread and pregnancy, and the food as the manifestation of male and female labour as a source
for reproduction of the household. Others have also pointed out the significance of food in
both social life and structure of the house (Atalay and Hastorf 2006; Wright 2000), marking
its importance in the archaeological material. Ethnographers, such as Delaney (1991) and
Evans-Pritchard (1940), have also contributed to the understanding of the hearths symbolic
importance as the centre of the household.

Hertz (1960 [1907]) described how the deceased stands as a threat to social order, and the
arrangements made by society to triumph over death. The concept on death on society has
been outlined by both Metcalf & Huntington (1991) and Humphreys (1981), as how death
effect aspects of social life, and what reactions the loss of life has in society. Thomas (1975)
introduced the terms ‗god‘ and ‗bad‘ death as how ideals relate to both time and place of
death, and the deceased post mortem treatment. Both Middleton (Lugbara) (1982) and Bloch
(Merina) (1982, 1981, 1971) describe these concepts in terms of ethnographic studies
concerning this dichotomy of death. Bloch and Perry argue that this is a social control over
death, dramatising the victory of order over death.

In regard to ancestor cult Parker-Pearson‘s (2009) The Archaeology of Death and Burial is
actively using ethnoarchaeology to illuminate past societies view on death and afterlife, social
organisation and world view. Through ethnography and historical documents Parker-Pearson
investigates different interpretations of the burial, and how the body is seen in present
societies in terms of pollution, fertility, liminality, etc.

Van Gennep‘s Rites de Passage (2004 [1909]) has been most influential in analysing the
universality of rites, arguing that every rite is un rite de passage. Van Gennep identified a
structure that underlies all rites of passage. Since then his schema has informed many cross
cultural study of the initiation process. Turner (1988, 1967) took van Gennep‘s ideas further
in his classic essay Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites of Passage (1988),
describing the transitional period of initiation rites in a way that made the richness and

18
coherence of the transitional (or liminal) period become apparent. Metcalf and Huntington
(1991) stand in opposition to this view, arguing that universality in behaviour (i.e. rites of
passage) does not exclude lower level variation, something already argued by Rivers in the
1920s (Rivers 1999).

The research done is Central Anatolia is quite limited compared to the vast amounts of
research that has been done in the Levantine area (Bar-Yosef 2004; Bar-Yosef and Valla
2001; Bar-Yosef 2001; Meignen et al. 2000; Bar-Yosef 1998; Schiegl et al. 1994; Bar-Yosef
et al. 1992; Middleton 1982; Arensburg and Bar-Yosef 1973; Guerrero et al. 2009; Kuijt and
Goring-Morris 2002; Kuijt 2000; Hole 2000; Cauvin 2000, 1979; Rollefson 2003; Bienert et
al. 2004; Bienert 1991; Richard 2003).

After a pace in investigations of the Anatolian prehistory took place in the 1990s, the book
Neolithic in Turkey: the cradle of civilization (Özdoğan and Başgelen 1999) was released
with a detailed description of 15 sites in the region. It discusses evidence from a number of
key sites as well as their wider significance in the progress of change throughout the Neolithic
period through several sites in the region. I have used it as a reference to the Aşıklı Höyük
settlement (Esin and Harmankaya 1999) since it is one of the more comprehensive works
about the research of the site.

A significant conference published as Proposal for a regional terminology for Central

Anatolia. In The Neolithic of Central Anatolia. Internal developments and external relations
during the 9th–6th millennia cal BC, Proc. Int. CANeW Round Table, Istanbul 23-24
November 2001 (reffered to as Özdoğan 2002; Thissen 2002; Özbaşaran and Buitenhuis 2002;
Gérard 2002; Duru 2002), were the most known archaeologist on the Central Anatolian
Neolithic debated issues such as statistics, dating, regional terminology, transformation in
society, architectural indications, cultural dynamics, symbolism, definitions, etc. This started
a movement to analyse and identify specific trends for the regions Neolithic, also
differentiating it to a greater extent from the terminology of the Levantine Neolithic.

The Ph.D. thesis Düring (2006) Constructing communities: clustered neighbourhood

settlements of the Central Anatolian Neolithic ca. 8500-5500 Cal. BC is one of the most
extensive studies on housing in the Central Anatolian Neolithic, and it has been often referred
to in my thesis. Düring analyses chronologically a selection of the most significant

19
settlements in the Central Anatolian Neolithic (Aşıklı Höyük, Canhasan III, Çatalhöyük,
Erbaba, and Canhasan I), in terms of stratigraphy, building units, internal features, population
estimates, etc. Düring analyses how community and society was constructed, and how the
constitution of society affected the household.

20
Chapter IV: Theory of the House and Ancestor Cult

―In the social concept of the ‗house‘, a single house is subject to a range of different
perspectives‖ (Bailey 1990:19)

As the title of this thesis implies; the house and ancestor ritual are connected. As we will see;
the perceptions on both the house and ancestor cult varies form one culture to another,
depending a range of factors. Man‘s vast spectre of culture, both in a physical and ethereal
sense, suggests that it is difficult to identify patterns of universal behaviour. Still it is fruitful
take in a position of inclusive observation, in terms of theoretical framework and
ethnographic material, to analyse material culture and explore the incredible possibilities of
human behaviour.

§ 4.1 – Defining „house‟

The term house is difficult to define. It is more comprehensive than one might expect. When
searching for the word ‗house‘ in a common dictionary there are 15 definitions were the first
five are ‗dwelling‘, ‗occupants of house‘, ‗building for animals‘, ‗place for entertainment‘,
and ‗theatre‘ 3. The word ‗house‘ is in other words not just a word for a certain physical
structure, but also a strong metaphor in other contexts. Bailey (1990:22f) argues that the word
‗house‘ denotes to place of worship, eating, drinking, dwelling, entertainment, farming,
education, legislation, economic activity, or astral observation. The word has a multitude of
meanings depending on social and material context. There are two important aspects for
social archaeologists to follow when working on houses. First one has to define the meaning
of ‗house‘, since its meaning is contextually dependent. The context, whether of social,
material or other parameters, defines the meaning of a house. The contexts is material in that
it is what the house contains, what it is constructed from, how it is ordered in thee
dimensions, and how that ordering relates to other houses. Secondly is continuity and
repetition of action. To define the house outside the limits of three-dimensional space is to
create a better understanding of the meaning of ‗house‘(Bailey 1990:23). The experiences
inside the house do highly differ from culture to culture. Rapoport (1969) argues that western
notions of comfort, adequate lightening, heating, pleasant and negative odour, privacy, and
hygiene may not be shared with other cultures. Regarding odour ―the Eskimo accepts very

3
Microsoft Encarta, World English dictionary: ‗house‘
http://uk.encarta.msn.com/encnet/features/dictionary/DictionaryResults.aspx?lextype=3&search=house

21
high smell concentrations inside the Igloo, and the smell of the toilet is accepted in the
traditional Japanese house‖, while in some cultures ―(...) smoke is sacred and is encouraged in
the house‖ (Rapoport 1969:61-62). All these notions affect the form of the house. Lévi-
Strauss (1987, 1983) characterizes the house as a social group, more comprehensive than the
household itself. Groups referred to by the term ‗house‘ are ―corporate bodies, sometimes
quite large, organized by their shared residence, subsistence, means of production, origin,
ritual actions, or metaphysical essence, all of which entail a commitment to a corpus of the
house property, which in turn can be said to materialize the social group‖ (Gillespie 2000:1).
The house is an enduring social group that is materially represented by a physical structure,
including the objects that rest within it (furnishing, curated heirlooms, and graves), resting
within a designated locus in the landscape.

To take a look at the house in social archaeological terms implies that it is definable in a
number ways, from an equally numerous range of perspectives, in many different social and
material contexts. Houses do not only reflect the social structure and activity; they play an
equal role in determining that structure and activity (Bailey 1990:26). Houses also contain
multiple meanings. They may be defined in terms of production and consumption. A house
can be interpreted as the centre of food production, containing the hearth, the grinding stone
and other kitchen equipment. It can at the same time be seen as the locus for biological
production through physical acts of conception, gestation, and birth. Bailey shows that
considering houses as living entities would be a profitable approach in the task of interpreting
the house, and see it as the physical nature of material culture (p.29).

A house is in other words more than just a structure serving a protective function against the
elements and human and animal foes. Lévi-Strauss (1987, 1983) described the house as a
specific form of social organization, a groupe social, both in terms of gender (i.e. the Kabyle
house - Bourdieu 1990b) and social hierarchy (i.e. the Zafimaniry - Bloch 1995). Carsten and
Hugh-Jones go further and view houses as ―(...) an extension of the person; like an extra skin,
carapace or second layer of clothes, it serves as much to reveal and display as it does hide and
protect‖ (1995:2). Domus and corpus are in intimately linked, and together with the mind they
are in continuous interaction. The physical structure, furnishing, social conventions, and
mental images of the house mobilise and create the ideas and activities unfolding within it
(Carsten and Hugh-Jones 1995). Domus, as portrayed by Hodder (1992), ―involves practical
activities carried out in the house, food preparation and the sustaining of life. But it is also an
abstract term‖ (p.44). It is particularly in the final stages of food transformation, from raw into

22
cooked, the domus (specifically its hearth) plays its role. Symbolic connotations are given to
practical activities; making the house an arena for symbolic elaboration. The house may be
used as a metaphor for both social and economic strategies, and relations of power. Domus
includes the provision of shelter and the storage of food connected the house by the concepts
of nurturing and caring, as well as it gains power from the exclusion, control and domination
of the agrios (e.g. ‗the outside‘ or ‗the wild‘) (p.45). The house acted as a symbolic focus that
domesticated people through the domus in terms of the idea and practice of domesticating the
agrios. Bender (1978) outlines the process of domestication – the guarantor of social life
against the wild was the house. It was where the wild was brought in and controlled, or where
culture got separated from nature. The importance of the domus does not necessarily base on
an opposition to the agrios (Parker-Pearson and Richards 1994a). Towards modern times the
hearth and the house (or home) is still recognised as some of the most important symbols of
security in our culture (Chapman 1998 [1955]:3). To put it in the words of Michael Balter:
―the house [is] something more than just a shelter with walls‖ (Balter 2005:319).

§ 4.2 – The house and the body

―Houses are built to live in, and not to look on (...)‖ Francis Bacon (1985 [1623]:193)

The house, body and mind are in continuous interaction. The physical structure, furnishing,
social conventions and mental images produce a ‗ready-made‘ environment fashioned by
pervious generations and lived in long before it becomes an object of thought (Carsten and
Hugh-Jones 1995:2). As humans we are experts in classification and categorization: we divide
and build structure around the world that surrounds us to make sense of it all (Humphrey
1984). Parker-Pearson and Richards (1994b) argue that ―Through classification, order is
imposed on the world, not simply an ordering of everything in its place, but an order of
morality, social relations, space, time, and the cosmos‖ (p.10). The human body‘s potential
divisions, such as top/bottom, left/right, front/back, vertical/horizontal, male/female, provide
a framework which is imposed on the world and projected on our surroundings. Various
ethnographic studies show the vast spectrum on how the domus is linked to the corpus, and
how the house then becomes a prime agent for socialization.

Houses are frequently thought of as bodies, sharing with them a common autonomy and life
history (see Parker-Pearson and Richards 1994b; Lane 1994). If people construct the houses
and make them their own image, they also use houses for to construct themselves as

23
individuals and groups. Environments are thought before they are built (Rapoport 1980:298),
and we build in order to think and act. The relationship is in its essence dynamic and reflexive
(Parker-Pearson and Richards 1994b:2). If the house is an extension of the person, it is also an
extension of the self (Carsten and Hugh-Jones 1995:3). At the Zafimaniry of Madagascar the
house ‗hardens‘ as the inhabitants themselves ‗harden‘ their relationship over time (Bloch
1995): the inhabitants relationship have direct impact on the house and vice versa. Even in
western-European societies children‘s drawings of houses with two windows and a door –
two eyes and a mouth – underlines the projection of the self in the house. The house is a
significant category, a focus ritual elaboration and a point of reference of the inhabitants own
understanding of the world (Carsten and Hugh-Jones 1995:21).

Carsten and Hugh-Jones (1995) characterise houses as dynamic entities, getting their vitality
for a number of sources: ―most obviously from the people who live in them but also from the
materials used in building, from life-giving rituals, or from the movement of heavenly bodies
which often determine their orientation‖ (p.37). The house has a processual nature, since
buildings themselves are not static and often have an interplay between permanence and
impermanence. A house must not only be built and maintained, get modified to fit their
occupants, get extended and rebuilt, and ultimately decay or get destroyed. One has to stress
that the architectural processes are made to coincide with important events and processes in
the lives of their occupants and are thought in terms of them (Carsten and Hugh-Jones 1995).
In ethnographical terms one can refer to Carstens work on the Langkawi in Malaysia (Carsten
1995), were the house is continuously under construction. Bloch (1995) shows how the house
among the Zafimaniry in Madagascar hardens and matures together with the people who
occupy it. As the house building is begun, a couple embarks on marriage and is only
completed when their first child is born. In Amazonian ethnography it is known from the
Maloca community (Hugh-Jones 1995) that houses undergo rapid turnovers and are in
constantly reshuffling of its occupants. It is a process that coincides with the careers o the
leaders who built them: when the leader dies the house dies with him. Bourdieu (1990a) does
in his study of the Kabyle house emphasise that as the Berbers cross the threshold and move
from the outside to the inside of the house, their whole world is reversed. The external and
internal world is associated with men and women respectively. The movement is strictly
gender based: movement inside is intrinsically female, while movement outwards is
intrinsically male. ―The supremacy given to movement outwards, in which the man affirms
his manliness by turning his back on the house in order to face other men, is merely a form of

24
categorical refusal of nature, the inevitable origin of man‘s movement away from nature‖
(Bourdieu 1990a:283).

§ 4.3 – Habitus
Bourdieu‘s paper on the Berber Kabyle house (1990b) prefigures the development of his re-
elaboration of habitus concept (1990a, 1977); a term concerning a structure of the mind
characterized by a set of acquired schemata, sensibilities, dispositions and taste. The
interaction between the body and the house plays a key role on his analysis on the logic of
practice were the habitus is seen as a product of history that produces individual and
collective practices (i.e. more history) in accordance with the schemes generated by history
(1990a:54). Daily routines in eating, sitting, sleeping, and moving in domestic space are
possible mechanisms in which people are socialized into particular rules and orientations. As
people go about their daily tasks they may acquire rules and constrains through movement of
the body. Hodder and Cessford argue that the rules become embodied (2004:18). The house
becomes an arena for daily practice. The inhabitants of a house would be aware of routinized
domestic space, particular practices, movement, ways of holding oneself, deferential gestures,
and more – knowingly using them in a positively valued manner. A child would have learnt
the social rules in the practices of daily life within the house. ―In this way daily practices
become social practices [having] a dimension that relates to social structuring and
restructuring‖ (Hodder and Cessford 2004:18). Eliade (1987 [1957]) argued that human
dwelling required the revelation of a sacred space to obtain a fixed point, a axis mundi, and
hence acquire orientation in the chaos of homogeneity. The axis mundi is a particular place
and considered to be the centre of the world, and often located inside the house (as for
instance a temple, basilica, or cathedral) (p.58).

§ 4.4 – Transpatial solidarity

Hiller and Hanson (1984) argue for a transpatial solidarity that lies in the local reproduction
of a structure recognisably identical to the other members of the group. The word solidarity
means in this case the reproduction of an identical pattern by individuals who remains
spatially separated from each other and the surrounding world. In contrast a spatial solidarity
works on the contrary principle: building links with other members of the group not by
analogy and isolation, but by continuity and encounter. To realise this it must stress the

25
continuity of interior and exterior instead of the interiors separateness. ―Movement across the
boundary, which would undermine a transpatial solidarity, is the fundamental condition of
existence for a spatial solidarity‖ (p.145). To use either transpatial or spatial solidarity forms
the conditions of living and the structural integrity of the dwellings within a group, reflecting
worldview and social practices.

Houses do not always inherent the female sphere and one should be cautious about describing
the house as a structure of unchanging gendered oppositions (Marini 1990). Houses can be
simultaneously private and public, and be associated with women, with men, or both. ―They
can provide models for the wider polity as well as being domestic entities‖ (Carsten and
Hugh-Jones 1995:41). Inside and outside may as well be associated with siblingship or
marriage, with descent or affinity, with unity or difference, or with high or low rank.

§ 4.5 – Houses as people

In certain contexts houses or settlements are spoken about as people, and people spoken about
as houses. For instance can this analogy between houses and people manifest itself in the
mapping of anatomy onto architecture, and vice-versa (Kan 1989:49). Houses do have a
diverse aspect attached to them. In some contexts they are given living qualities with close
association to the body, and the natural processes that are attached to people, animals or
plants do apply to the house: they may be born, grow, mature, and die. They may move or
walk, feed and get fed, get married and copulate (Carsten and Hugh-Jones 1995:42; Carsten
1995; Bloch 1995).

The house and its occupants are fed in the sense that shared consumption often provides the
basic ideas about cohabitation and kinship. The hearth itself may be the central image and
focal point of the house (Hodder 1992), and ―[it] is as much a defining feature of the house as
eating together is a defining feature of kinship‖ (Carsten and Hugh-Jones 1995:42). The
hearth is not only centre, but also an instrument in the process of transformation. The different
elements that enter the house (meat and vegetable, kin and affine, the like and unlike) may be
said to be mixed together, blended, and veritably cooked together. In this way the houses do
continually transform what passes through them, and the hearth is the location where these
transformations take place; both figuratively and literally. There is a constant two-way
mapping that goes on between the body and its direct daily environment. Houses are at times
referred to as outer shells, skins, or garments. Carsten and Hugh-Jones (1995) refer to the

26
statement based on the intimate environmental relationship the body and the house share, that
at times do make it unclear which is serving as a metaphor: ―house for body or body for
house‖ (p.43). Both the house and the body seem to be born, live, grow old, die and decay
(p.45).

§ 4.6 – The ambiguity of food

It is not only the transformation the hearth does, from raw to cooked, that possesses
significant social and ritual power. The end product being food, and is highly valued and
follow both social and ritual rules in terms of production and consumption. To quote Haaland
(2007:169): ―Cooking provides not only ‗food for the body‘ but also ‗food for thought‘‖.
Food is of fundamental importance as a medium for initiation and maintenance of social
relations. There is a close and extensive relations between food and cosmological and
ideological beliefs, and different food ways are associated with modes of feeling, thinking and
behaving (Goody 1982). In a Christian context one has the ‗breaking of the bread‘ and it
representing (or in the catholic sense transforming into) the body of Christ. All major present
religions; such as Judaism (Yom Kippour), Islam (Ramaḍān), Christianity (Lent), and
Hinduism (Maha Shivaratri/Navratri), practice fasting as an act of willingly abstaining from
some or all food, drink, or both, for a period of time. Haaland (2006) argues that bread was
the staple food of the Middle Eastern Neolithic (see also Wright 2000), and it having a
mysterious process similar to pregnancy. The importance of the hearth is manifested with it
being the main symbol of the household, because it is ―the meeting place where the male and
female labour at which is created the source of sustenance for reproduction of the household‖
(Haaland 2007:169). ―Food is coercive‖ according to MacClancy (1992:5). It has immense
power in terms of identity, physical nourishment, ways of thought, sex, (political/social)
power, friendship, time-controlling, and medium for magic and witchcraft. Food pervades
culture and gives meaning to its consumers. It plays a central role in all societies, and
provides as much intricate symbolism and metaphors as nutritional substance (Atalay and
Hastorf 2006). Food marks identity, social status, and the differential status of the living and
the dead (Parker-Pearson 2009). On the Pacific island Tikopia (often referred to by Hodder
2006) the mourner eat cooked food as a symbol of the social and domestic disruption of life
by death. Raw food is placed on the grave as a symbol of the product of the deceased‘s
labours (Farb and Armelagos 1980:93). Delaney‘s (1991) work present Turkish village
societies that it is at the hearth the wife transforms the wheat seeds into bread, just as she

27
transforms her husband‘s seed into a child. Furthermore the wife is expected to assure the
continuation of her husband‘s ocak (hearth) within the first year of marriage; by giving birth
to their first child. If a man does not have any sons his hearth is in danger, meaning his hearth
will extinguish and his patriline will die out (Delaney 1991:159). The hearth is in other words
connected to producing food and producing offspring. The connection hearth and lineage is
also known from the work of Evans-Pritchard among the Nuer of southern Sudan, were
lineages are equivalent to ‗hearths‘ or ‗entrances to huts‘ (Evans-Pritchard 1940:195).

§ 4.7 – The house as an axis mundi

Lewis-Williams (2004) argues that the structures can be constructed exemplars of a tiered
cosmology, and that the axis mundi could be reached through the use of shamanistic practices
inside the structures. Lewis-Williams further criticises scholars for focusing on dissimilarities
instead of the puzzling similarities between geographically distant shamanisms. Shamanistic
people throughout the world believe in a stratified cosmos, in its essence consisting of three
levels: a subterranean realm inhabited by its peculiar spirits and spirit animals; an upper level
situated in or above the sky, populated by its own spirits and creatures; and an intermediate
level on which humans live and on which the lower and upper levels interfere in various ways
(p.30). The shaman is a person with the ability to travel between the three levels of cosmos,
and interact with the spirits and animals they encounter, making the shamans‘ mediatory route
the axis mundi. The forms found in imagery; such as zigzags, crenelations, grids and diamond
chains, are said to be forms that are wired into the human nervous system (Burke 2002;
Eichmeier and Höfer 1974), and all homo sapiens have the potential to experience them
regardless of cultural background (Lewis-Williams 1991; Lewis-Williams and Dowson 1988;
Reichel-Dolmatoff 1978).

Lewis-Williams distinguishes between features in terms of verticality and horizontality as an

expression and construction of a tiered cosmos within the house. Features such as posts and
beams may have an appeal to either verticality or horizontality and therefore be an axis
mundi. E.g. the Berber Kabyle House (Bourdieu 1990b) such as the forked tree trunk
(thigejdith – feminine/vertical) is connected to the main beam (asalas alemmas –
masculine/horizontal) being essential to the prosperity of the hose and its inhabitants.

28
§ 4.8 – Social implication of death
Durkheim famous study Le Suicide pointed out that although death itself is a supremely
individual and personal act, it also has a social and non-individual aspect attached to it
(Durkheim 2002 [1897]). It directly affects the relationship between the individual and the
society that surrounds it. The tension between ‗the physical separateness of human organisms‘
and the ‗individual‘s identification with society‘ becomes apparent by the occurrence of death
(Metcalf and Huntington 1991:5). It becomes a social phenomenon, and can both occur in an
instant or as a lengthy process, with wider social problems connected to it. Durkheim‘s pupil
Robert Hertz based his theoretical work on ethnographic studies of Mayo-Polynesian cultures.
He claimed that the deceased is not only a biological individual, but a social being projected
upon the physical individual whose ―destruction is tantamount to a sacrilege‖ against the
social order (Hertz 1960 [1907]:77). He argues that society had to meet this threat by
recuperating from the deceased what it had given of itself and project it on to another host.
There are thus two phases of mortuary rituals: a disaggregational phase (represented by the
disposal of the corpus), and a reinstallational phase (represented by a secondary burial) from
which the collective emerges triumphant over death. A transfer from one social order to
another order is invoked to explain the parallels between the symbolism of mortuary
ceremonies, initiation rites and marriages: each involving a transfer in whom a new social
identity is grafted onto the individual. Death, one true universal, is puzzling enough not
universal in its expressions since its not ―everywhere regarded in essentially the same light‖
(Rivers 1999 [1926]:40). On the contrary, as argued by Metcalf and Huntington (1991:6),
―life has a certain universal currency, and death appears only as its absence‖. Humphreys
(1981) argues that death as a social phenomenon is not necessary only reserved for human
kind. There are several examples of particular plants and animals acquiring particular social
and cultural significance juxtaposing them with humans: such as leopards and cattle amongst
the Dowayo of northern Cameroon (Barley 1981), pigs for the Aré‘Aré in the Solomon
Islands (de Coppet 1981), a pet lamb in the Romano-British cemetery at Owslebury
(Molleson 1981), cedar trees in ancient Mesopotamia (Cassin 1981).

§ 4.9 – Rites of passage

Death is a transition, but only the last of a long chain of passages a human being goes through
within its life. Van Gennep‘s work The Rites of Passage (Les Rites de Passage) (2004 [1909])
set up a class of rites which accompany every change of place, state, social position and age,

29
described as ‗rites de passage‘, and it is argued that it harbours ―liminal period‖ as a subclass
within it (Turner 1988, 1967). According to Turner‘s contribution to Betwixt & Between
(Mahdi, Foster, and Little 1988); rites de passage are found in all societies but tend to reach
their peak of their expression small-scale, relatively stable and cyclical societies, where
change is bound up with biological and meteorological rhythms and recurrences rather than
with technological innovations . Rites the passage are an ―archetypal structure of the human
psyche‖ (1988:3). In the eyes of Turner; van Gennep has shown that all transitional rites can
be divided into three sub-phases: separation, margin (limen), and aggregation. Separation
comprises symbolic behaviour signifying the detachment of the individual or group, either
through an earlier fixed point in the social structure or a set of cultural conditions. In the
marginal (or liminal) intervening phase the sate of the ritual subject is abstruse and
ambiguous. The ritual subject is betwixt and between in a state that has few or none of the
attributes of the past or coming state. The third phase of aggregation is when the passage is
competed and the transition is fulfilled. Rites de passage do not restrict movement between
specific statuses, and is not necessarily connected to a single persona. As they can accompany
any change from one state to another, they might occur when a tribe goes to war, or a passage
for scarcity to plenty by performing a harvest-festival. The ‗liminal persona‘ (p.6), as the
person is described which undergoes rites de passage, are accompanied by a set of symbols
and defined by a name. An example is the Ndembu people of Zambia, where the name mwadi
has multiple meanings: ―a boy novice in circumcision rites‖, ―chief-designate undergoing his
installation rites‖, or ―first ritual wife‖. The symbolism is attached to the liminal persona is
both complex and bizarre. In many societies these symbols are drawn from the biology of
death; featuring decomposition, catabolism, and other physical processes harbouring negative
stigmas (e.g. menstruation: frequently associated with the absence or loss of a foetus). As
liminal persona is structurally dead, he or she may be treated as a corpse, according to the
customs of the given society the person is a part of. This person ―may be buried, forced to lie
motionless in the posture and directions of customary burial, may be stained black [often seen
as the colour of death], or may be forced to live for a while in the company of masked and
monstrous mummers representing, inter alia, the dead, or worse still, the un-dead‖ (p.6). Its
status is unclear and contradictory; nor a pat of the living or the dead, and tends to be
regarded as ritually unclean. As the unclear is regarded as the unclean, the person is
particularly polluting. This is also in respect to food, and especially its preparation. They are
nor one thing or another, and yet both at the same time. These transitional beings have no

30
status, property, insignia, secular clothing, rank, or kinship position – nothing that define them
structurally from their fellows.

Turner (1988, 1967) claims that van Gennep‘s work can be seen as an appeal for an universal
symbolism of the liminal. In this sense it is very difficult to explain a ritual (or anything else)
that is not in some way a rite of passage. On the other hand it is with great care one should
handle an expression as ‗universal symbolism‘. As human kind is geographically wide spread,
exposed to different environment and cultural influences, and including the factor of time, one
can only with great hardship argue for any cultural universality (Metcalf and Huntington
1991). One should rather look at specific rituals, without pre-branding them as ―universal‖,
incorporating them in a greater concept.

§ 4.10 – The „good‟ and „bad‟ death

Bloch and Parry (1982) argue there is an impulse to determine the time and place of death,
and a dissociation of social death from the termination of bodily functions meant to represent
an attempt to both control deaths unpredictable nature, and hence dramatise the victory of
order over biology (p.15). Death is here represented as a cyclical order. This has led to the
concepts of ‗good‘ and ‗bad‘ death. The ‗good‘ death is one suggesting a degree of control
over the arbitrariness of the biological occurrence by replacing a prototype to which such
deaths conform, and thus can be seen as an instance of a general pattern necessary for the
reproduction of life. The ‗bad‘ death, by contrast, is one with absence of control and therefore
not resulting in regeneration (Thomas 1975:192).

A ‗good‘ death among the Lugbara of Uganda (Middleton 1982) is one which occurs inside
the home, where the shrines of the ancestor are located, and a legitimate authority is
represented by the symbol of speech. A dying man must speak to his heir so the proper order
of lineage is maintained in the locality where the lineage anchored and continuity is
guaranteed by the smooth transfer of authority. The ‗bad‘ death, on the other hand, occurs
away from home and therefore away from the ancestral shrines, making it difficult for the
deceased soul to return. As a result the speech to the heir cannot occur; loosing the
regenerating element of the dead man in his antithesis, the disorganised wild. Another
example of the dichotomies of death is found among the Merina of Madagascar (Bloch 1971,
1982, 1981). Here the ‗good‘ death is to place the deceased in the communal tomb. The
secondary burial of the corpse does not only recharge fertility of the group and land of the

31
decease, but also saves the deceased himself from complete obliteration. Hence the ‗bad‘
death is one were the deceased is not entered into the communal tomb. Without the reburial
not only a potential source of regeneration is lost to the collective, but the death of the
individual is truly terminal. There is in other words an ideal connected to time and place of
death in all societies, and they may be substantially different. As there is an ideal in Western
Europe to depart life with family close by (Nuland 1994), there is in some Native American
tribes to die in peace; alone and undisturbed. Death is undoubtedly one of the most ritually
elaborate and mythical powered aspects of existence. In contrary to birth, death is a transition
from physical to the ethereal. The faith of this transition to the ethereal afterlife may be
altered through different rites to either assure an ideal transition, an ideal afterlife, or both
(Metcalf and Huntington 1991). This affecting the treatment of the dead in a number of ways:
grave structure (built, incorporated, cremated) and orientation, body arrangement, and grave
goods (or the lack of it). Orientation is significant, and also known from most major present
religions. Muslims burials are aligned so the corpus is facing Mecca and the Qibla. Christian
burials are laid west-east with the heads to the west so that they may arise on the Day of
Judgement to face God in the east. Pagan religions of post-Roman England and Viking
Scandinavia are broadly orientated east-west and north-south, copying the two orientations for
the longhouse dwellings in this period (Parker-Pearson 2009:6).

§ 4.11 – The dichotomy of death

―(...) man has not basically changed. Death is still fearful, frightening happening, and
the fear of death is a universal fear even if we think we have mastered it on many
levels.‖ (Kübler-Ross 1997:19)

There is a central dichotomy connected to death: pollution versus purity (or perhaps dead
versus living). According to Parker-Pearson death is the situation ―(...) par excellence where
the living are confronted by the danger of a torn social fabric and the physical contamination
of a putrescent corpse‖ (p.24). The mourners are at constant risk of getting symbolically
polluted, especially during the liminal stage of the rites of passage of death. As the corpse and
material goods overwhelms the living, it must be contained by rites of purification and by acts
of transference which attach the pollution on to specific people and items. The decaying
corpse must be separated from the living as time passes by; incessantly or until the
decarnation is complete. The fear of the dead (p.25) is a regular feature of liminal time prior

32
to the rites of incorporation. Universally the dead are a source of fear, especially during the
putrefaction of the corpse. Over time fear may transform into veneration, pacifying the corpse
as it completes decomposition (or decarnation). This fear my be based on confrontation death
creates in human on their awareness of their own transience, to which they react with attempts
to salvage out this disrupting experience by clinging some residue to which permanence can
be attributed (Humphreys 1981:5) Overcoming this fear may be done is several ways. One
example is to mimic or include familiar daily activities and impressions. The Berawan, an
ethnic group from central Borneo, have a custom to make noises at funerals (Metcalf and
Huntington 1991:64f). There s a large drum that can only be played during funerals, that is
played day and night, producing rhythms that are proscribed at other times. The pounding of
the drum is similar to the motions of woman washing cloth; rolling the together to a ball and
pounding them against a rock or any other suitable object. One can also compare it to the
pounding of rice, or perhaps logging. By mimicking these aspects of daily life, one includes
the funeral as a part of life; reducing the awkwardness of the situation and making it more
anodyne.

§ 4.12 – Individuality and its problems

As it has been claimed that human kind has a universal belief in the immortality of the dead
existing inn all cultures (Lehmann and Myers 1997), and that that ancestor worship is a
universal aspect of religion (Steadman, Palmer, and Tilley 1996), this may be a result of an
eagerness for permanence all human kind is looking for. Tomb monuments in western culture
are made to individualise those they commemorate. As with the Greek attitude, presented by
Vernant (1981), life is heavily associated with individuality. Death threatens to put an end to
differentiation unless there is a possibility of preserving the memory of the deceased as an
individual. The construction of a structure assures memory among the living, preserving the
deceased as an individual to prevail the memory of the person. Archaeologists may analyse
grave-goods and skeletal data to reconstruct as many of the individual features of the dead as
possible may be seen as a desire to concretize the individual. This approach can be
problematic when working with cultures that deviate from the ideology of the individual. If
we again turn to the Merina of Madagascar (Bloch 1971, 1982, 1981) they seem to reverse the
ideology. They crunch up the bones of the dead all together in order to make the tomb into an
ideal representation of group unity. The collective is favoured prior to the individual, assuring
eternal life through becoming part of the collective tomb (Bloch 1981). Other cases, such as

33
the Krahó Indians of Brazil, see the image of the dead as lacking individualising ties created
by affinity, becoming steadily less differentiated, until they end as stocks and stones (Da
Cunha 1981).

§ 4.13 – The symbolism of the human body

The human body is itself often used as a symbol, and corpse symbolism is a special type of
this symbolism. In most cultures through history the human body has been used to represent
moral and social verities. Rituals such as circumcision and scarification at initiation shows
that the body gives a vide reservoir of moral representations, and the same body carries its
own possibilities for symbolic expression after death (Metcalf and Huntington 1991).
Following Turner (1967); the process of rotting, with the dissolution of the body‘s form,
provides a metaphor for a social and moral transition. Further Turner, following Van Gennep,
argues that the corpse is associated with death because its decay is a metaphor for liminality.
This direct connection between the two seems quite obvious. However, whether death or
liminality is seen as primary ultimately depends upon whether one begins with funerals or
rites of passage. Pursuing the symbolism of the corpse by focusing upon the process of
dissolution is in many ways fruitful. Nonetheless, ―(...) like percussive sound, corruption is a
nearly universal symbol, it varies greatly in its metaphorical significance‖ (Metcalf and
Huntington 1991:72).

§ 4.14 – Material culture and ritual

To interpret material culture without any data on ideology or any other source of information
on social structure (e.g. ethnography) one is liable to end up with the false conclusions.
Between historians, social anthropologists, and archaeologists the conceptual barrier is based
on the antithesis between objects and meanings people attach to them. Producing examples of
burial forms or artefact patterns would be next to impossible if it was not because of the help
there is in ethnographic or written sources. On the other hand it is attractive for some
archaeologists to look for a solution stressing the materiality of their data, associating
themselves with science rather than anthropology, arguing for that the facts should speak for
themselves (Humphreys 1981).

There is no simple universal explanation for the forms of funeral rites and the symbolism
connected to it. Metcalf and Huntington (1991) argue that there may be a general psychic

34
unity of mankind, although the identification of vague quasi universal behaviour does not
exclude variation at levels lower than the whole species. Only when placed in the context of a
particular ideological, social, and economic system, rituals of death may begin to make sense
that would not be possible by perusing cultural universals. Conceptions of death are not only
elusive, but highly variable.

―Death is so striking and unique an even that if one had to choose something which
must have been regarded in essentially the same light by all mankind at all times in all
places, I think one would be incline to choose it in preference to any other, and yet I
hope to show that the primitive conception of death (...) is different, one might say
radically different, from our own‖ (Rivers 1999 [1924]:40)

The moment of death is not only related to the afterlife, but also on the process of living,
aging, and producing offspring. Death relates to life; it relates to the recent life the deceased
was living, and the life the person procreated and leaves behind. The continuity of the living
is a more parable reality than the of the dead, and as a result it is common for life values of
sexuality and fertility to dominate the symbols of funerals (Metcalf and Huntington 1991:108)

§ 4.15 – Moving on to the archaeological material

If we look at both Aşıklı Höyük and Çatalhöyük, and their setting in the greater Neolithic
interaction sphere in the Levantine area, one can see traces of a house structure and internal
order that may show some form of social control and a domestication of space. I urge the
reader to see the archaeological material presented in light of the presented theories and
perceptions presented in this chapter. Do not to analogical project it to the material, but to see
it in the light of a broad cognitive dimension other than the universal bias there is on the
interpretation of ancestor cult and the house.

35
Chapter V: Material remains from Aşıklı Höyük and Çatalhöyük

In this chapter I will first set Aşıklı Höyük and Çatalhöyük in the context of the Levantine
area, both in terms of time and space. I want to illuminate how certain behaviour, such as the
repetitive practices, may have been practiced long before the material seen in the Central
Anatolian Neolithic. Thereafter I will present the two settlement separate in terms of the given
material culture.

§ 5.1 – Aşıklı Höyük and Çatalhöyük in a Levantine context

The process of sedentism was closely related to ritual and started as early as the Late Natufian
period in the Levantine area. Certain landscapes could have been used as ritual centres for
initiations, feasting, marriage, exchange, burial, etc. (Schmidt 2000). In the north of Syria and
southeast of Turkey, at sites such as Tell ‗Abr 3, Jerf el Ahmar, and Göbekli, there has been
found larger buildings from the PPNA. These buildings were widely accepted as ritual
buildings due to their circular form and subterranean positioning (Hodder 2007:107). These
large communal buildings have elaborate internal furnishing, as seen at Tell ‗Abr 3 were these
buildings had a diameter ranging from 7-12 metres (Yartah 2005). Building B2 at Tell ‗Abr 3
was dug 1.55 metres into virgin soil and had a bench within its circular walls, with Bucrania
deposited in a bench. Yartah (2005) argues that large early PPNA communal buildings at
Mureybet and Jerf el Ahmar are not ritually or symbolically elaborate and were probably used
for storage. Towards the end of PPNA Yartah suggested less evidence for economic functions
and more decoration and ritual. At Çatalhöyük forensic work on the floors showed that the
―shrines‖ were actually used as domestic houses (Bull et al. 2005; Matthews 2005). The
monthly replasterings, elaborate symbolic remains and the rebuilding of houses led to the
hypothesis that social life was organised partly through the routines and practices of domestic
socialization (Hodder 2006; Hodder and Cessford 2004). As the house itself was embedded
within a complex symbolic world, the daily activities within houses formed and reformed the
social world (Hodder 2007).

At Çatalhöyük there is evidence for continuities in practices and functions within houses, and
very specific house-based continuities in art and symbolism (i.e. plate 6.2) (Düring 2006;
Hodder 2006). Evidence for feasting in connection with symbolical power and prestige
exchange in the PPNA both from southern Anatolia and the core Levantine area may partly be

36
evident at Çatalhöyük. Nonetheless the majority of evidence ―suggests that status and power
were very much based on the control of people and their socialization within domestic units‖
(Hodder 2007:109).

Repetitive practices can be traced back to Middle Palaeolithic. The Kebara Cave is located on
the western escarpment of Mt. Carmel in modern day Israel and has occupational deposits
spanning the Middle Palaeolithic and Natufian periods (aprox. 60,000 – 10,000 B.C.) (Bar-
Yosef et al. 1992). The Middle Palaeolithic deposits show repeated use of the cave for
hearths, while the inner part of the cave was used as a dump area (Goldberg 2001; Schiegl et
al. 1994). There is evidence for deposits of overlapping hearths, although the placing of the
hearths was not exact (Meignen et al. 2000), and far from the extent found for instance at
Aşıklı Höyük (see § 5.1.4). Evidence may show a ‗hearth zone‘ in the cave were people over
a extended period of time made hearths, without a specific backward reference (Hodder
2007:110). A focus of continuity has also been suggested for some of the other Kebaran
sites4, such as Ohalo II (Nadel 2006, 1990), Kharaneh IV, and Ein Gev (Bar-Yosef and Valla
2001:111-122). At the Ein Gev 1 (Jordan Valley, Israel – fourteenth-millennium B.C.) a hut
was fund dug into the slope of a hill. This hut was periodically occupied with six successive
layers which accumulated within it (Arensburg and Bar-Yosef 1973:201). Subfloor burials
probably occurred both at Ein Gev and Kharaneh IV (Bar-Yosef and Valla 2001:111-122).
The first use of lime plaster can traced back to the Kebaran, but it is not before the Natufian
that there is evidence for its use in architecture (Kingery, Vandiver, and Prickett 1988:241).

In the Natufian there is some degree of sedentism indicated by finds of animals and birds
from all seasons (e.g. ‗Ain Mallah), vermin (such as the house mouse5) (Hodder 2007) and
indications for food processing (Wright 2000). The use of a broad spectre of resources made
sedentism possible. At ‗Ain Mallah there has been found traces of superpositioning of
buildings; both in form of succeeding each other at the same spot (―ancient level‖), and
sequences of houses dug into each other (―recent level‖) (Perrot 1966). The Younger Dryas
climatic deterioration towards the end of the Natufian resulted in a dispersal of many hamlets
and a more mobile lifestyle in the Levant (Bar-Yosef 2001). In the Taurus and south-eastern
Anatolia the Younger Dryas had the opposite effect; resulting in a greater degree of sedentism
at sites such as Hallan Çemi (Bar-Yosef 2004). Toward the end of the Natufian there is some

4
The Kebara Cave has led to the derivative Kebaran; referring to Epipalaeolithic groups in the Levant prior to
the Natufian.
5
Mus musculus domesticus

37
evidence indicating post-mortem skull removal, but no evidence for circulation or reuse. This
does not by itself indicate construction of historical links to the ancestors (Hodder 2007:111).
Boar heads, a child skeleton with necklace were found in a houses at Mallaha (Perrot 1966),
which could be an indication for ritualized abandonment processes.

In the following PPNA the settlements grew 3 to 8 times larger than those in the Natufian
(Bar-Yosef 2001), and houses were often oval shaped and partly subterranean, with internal
hearths and plaster floors (Hodder 2007). The sites became more structured, and got a higher
extent of delineated use of space in comparison to the prior Natufian culture. There is also
more evidence for repeated use of space or housing in throughout the region. Both at
Quermez Dere in northern Iraq (Watkins 2006, 2004), and Phase II at Mureybet (Cauvin
1979) in the Middle Euphrates show good evidence for rebuilding in the same space. At
Jericho a large amount of very repetitive surfaces adjacent to the tower, and inside the
settlement there is residential continuity in both the PPNA and PPNB deposits. Houses could
last through several phases, but usually with rebuilding almost from the base of the wall
(Kenyon 1981:268f). It must be said that the walls were cut further down than at Çatalhöyük
(Hodder 2007).

In the PPNB the rise of huge sites such as ‗Ain Ghazal show frequent floor replasterings , and
at Jericho ―(...) numerous floor levels suggest a prolonged period of use‖ both in buildings
and courtyards (Kenyon 1981:295; Hole 2000). At PPNB Beidha in Jordan the plaster layers
in some buildings exceeds 5.5 cm (Kirkbride 1966) – making it tempting to draw parallels to
Çatalhöyük. At Abu Hureyra 2 houses were often constructed on top of each other; up to nine
times in sequence. Floors had an average of 2-3 renewals, and sometimes up to 10 (Moore et
al. 2000:262ff). Hearths were at a great extend built on top of each other suggesting that ―(...)
the builders of a new house often remembered not only the plan but also the internal
arrangements of its predecessor, and considered it appropriate to replicate both‖ (Moore et al.
2000:265). Özdoğan and Özdoğan (1989) describe Çayönü in south-eastern Turkey as being
focused on horizontal homogeneity rather than vertical continuity. But the homogeneity in
building types could have an element of vertical continuity, since every newer building layer
rested on the foundations of the predeceasing one without disturbing its structure (Özdoğan
and Özdoğan 1989:73). A similar pattern can be seen in the deep soundings at Aşıklı Höyük,
were multiple sequences can be seen build exactly on top of each other (see §5.1.5).

38
The material indicates that repetitive practices in houses and memory construction took place
in the PPNB and related groups in the Middle East and Turkey. One could on argue for a
cultural contact between some groups in Central Anatolia. Cauvin (2000:29) argues that
Çatalhöyük is a product of a diffusion coming from the Near Eastern Neolithic. On the other
hand there are archaeologists, claiming there is not enough evidence to verify that the Central
Anatolian Neolithic was a product of the Levantine Neolithic (e.g. M. Özbaşaran – pers.
com.). Özbaşaran does not deny a degree of cultural contact between the regions, but not to
the extent of a mono-channelled diffusion going from the Levant and towards Central
Anatolia.

Nonetheless the majority of early Middle Eastern Neolithic hearths and ovens are located
inside houses, while some are placed outside close to roasting pits (Byrd 1994). The same
location patterns can be seen in the Central Anatolian Neolithic. In the Levant, as the
importance of housing became more eminent, there was a change in shape and spatial division
of the house: from an oval shape with few rooms in the PPNA, to rectangular with multiple
rooms in the PPNB (Akkermans and Schwartz 2003; Bar-Yosef 1998; Steadman 2005; Kuijt
and Goring-Morris 2002). The material remains indicate that the house is becoming much
more important as a sign for who is living there, possibly about relations in the social world as
well as relations with the divine world (Haaland 2007:176). Increased use of lime plaster in
the PPNB may be a result of an increased focus on the house, as it is labour intensive to
produce (Gourdin and Kingery 1975; Kingery, Vandiver, and Prickett 1988). To produce the
lime plaster in sufficient amounts requires heating for three or four days at temperatures of
800-900 °C (bright heat) with constant fuel additions (Kingery, Vandiver, and Prickett
1988:221). These efforts were made all over the greater Levantine area during the Neolithic
(Cauvin 2000; Goring-Morris and Horwitz 2007; Kingery, Vandiver, and Prickett 1988),
implementing that the house was of great symbolic and social importance.

These efforts were made in Central Anatolian Neolithic as well. Çatalhöyük is well known for
its multiple plastering sequences. At Aşıklı Höyük and Çatalhöyük the intramural burial of the
ancestors, the multiple rebuilding sequences of both the house as a whole and the hearth and
ovens within it, do indeed refer to the house as a structure of great ritual and symbolic
importance. Just as there are clear distinctions between Central Anatolia and the Levant, one
might see the astonishing similarities on how the ancestors play a crucial role in the
perception of the house as a social and symbolic entity.

39
Hodder and Cessford (2004) underline the importance of the house as a social unit at
Çatalhöyük. Houses often contained burials of a range of individuals, with a broad
representation of all ages and both genders. These individuals were placed below during its
use, suggesting a possible relationship with those buried beneath the floors and those
occupying the building. All houses have traces of ritual and art (Last 1998), sometimes so
elaborate that they at the time of their discovery got interpreted as ‗shrines‘ (Mellaart 1967).
The placement of the platforms, with raised edges and changing in height into 1.0-1.5 m
squares, and the size of the main rooms rarely exceeding 5-x-5 m, meant that movement
inside the house was both conscientious and restricted (Hodder and Cessford 2004:22). The
different areas had different social meanings. There is a tendency for different categories of
people to be buried under different platforms. All these factors summed together give us a
vague picture of what social importance the house and the dead had in their days of
occupation. Hodder and Cessford argue that daily practice and social memory are inseparable,
since societies without a written language a important mechanism of social reproduction is
through construction of social memory (2004:31). Community-wide memories may be
imbedded in daily practices and rules, such as the inhabitants knowing that the hearth
belonged in the south of the main room. This does not necessary mean that there was any
specific memory of an individual house in which the hearth was in the south. Continuity of
houses in the exact of one house on the walls of the preceding one may arguably indicate that
memory was used to reproduce regulatory codes through the practices in the house. This may
also be underlined by certain burials that is was ―clearly permissible for later interments to
disturb earlier burials‖ as there are ―clear indications that the precise locations and nature of
earlier burials were remembered years or even deceased later‖ (Hodder and Cessford
2004:34). In a society that buries its death within the house, it seems there is an ideal of
keeping the diseased within the immanent cosmos of the structure. This practice is also
known from the Tikopia buried their dead under or around houses as perhaps an indicator of
ancestral veneration or a more generally desire to maintain perpetuated links to the diseased
members within the house (Kirch 1996; Kirch and Yen 1982; Firth 1936). In contrast are the
of graves are the Batammaliba graves in Togo and Benin; instead of intramural burial the
graves themselves are mimicking houses (Preston Blier 1987). The graves of the household
heads are closed with a flat round stone, the kubotan, which in life is used to seal the hole
which links the ground floor and the first floor in the house. Funerary and birth rites take
place underneath this hole, which embodies the house‘s life force and the continuum between
birth, death, and rebirth (Parker-Pearson 2009:5). Still, even though the grave has its own

40
house, it is directly connected to the deceased pre-mortem residence and the rites connected to
the house.

With this in mind I will separately present Aşıklı Höyük and Çatalhöyük and their respective
locations, history, dates and archaeological material. This is to bring forth the similarities and
differences of the material culture at the sites, and nuanced view on the symbolic
manifestations of the house and ancestor cult.

§ 5.2 – Aşıklı Höyük

The site of Aşıklı Höyük is located in the province of Aksaray, 25 km southeast from the
province capital with the same name, on the south western fringe of the volcanic plateau of
Cappadocia. It is situated 1119.5 metres above sea level; a little higher than the regions
average being ca. 1000 metres. The site itself is about 4 ha (Esin and Harmankaya 1999:118),
considerably smaller than the well known site of Çatalhöyük (13 ha - Hodder 1996) (Hodder
and Cessford 2004:17). The surrounding landscape is formed by erosion of river valleys into
tuff deposits. The Melendiz Valley, where the Aşıklı Höyük is located, constitutes a
favourable, fertile, and diverse habitat. The proximity to an obsidian source did become the
base of a trade with the material supplying areas as far away as today‘s Cyprus and Iraq (Esin
and Harmankaya 1999; Düring 2006:72). The site is close to the mentioned site of
Çatalhöyük; located approximately 150 km northeast from Aşıklı Höyük.

§ 5.2.1 – Site history:

Aşıklı Höyük was investigated by Professor Ian A. Todd when he first visited the site in the
summer of 1964. Todd emphasised the importance of the obsidian in the area, based on over
6000 obsidian pieces collected from the surface layer alone (Todd 1966; Singh 1974:78). The
site was classified as medium sized mound and partly destroyed the river situated next to it.
On the basis of the lithics and animal bones located in the surface layers the site got known as
a contemporary to the Palestine PPNB, which later got reinforced by C14 dates (based on five
unstratified radiocarbon dates going from 7008 ± 130 to 6661 ± 108) (Mellaart 1975:94).

The first comprehensive excavations took place relatively late: first when the government
launched a plan that would result in the rise of the waters of the Mamasın Lake located close
to Aşıklı Höyük, Professor Ufuk Esin (University of Istanbul) started the salvage excavations

41
in 1989 (Esin et al. 1991). There have been altogether undertaken nine excavations to the year
2003; uncovering approximately 4200 m2 on the horizontal plain, making it one of the largest
scale excavations in the region (Düring 2006:73).

§ 5.2.2 – Dates
The newest dates for Aşıklı Höyük show that the occupational period was from 8200 – 7400
BC (Thissen 2002; Hodder and Cessford 2004), extracted from 3 layers with a total of 13
phases (see Table 4.1. in Düring 2006:73); which places it in ECA II (correlating with the
E/MPPNB in the Levant). This makes it older than the settlement of Çatalhöyük (Steadman
2004:530; Mellaart 1975:98; Hodder 1999, 2006, 2007). It is known as one of the earliest
Aceramic Neolithic sites on the Anatolian plateau, and the prior mentioned extraction of the
obsidian source was likely to be frequented as far back as the Paleolithic nomadic hunter-
gatherers. Due to its date and structural organization Aşıklı Höyük is known to be ―(…) a
prime example of a first foray into sedentism‖ (Steadman 2004:537).

§ 5.2.3 – Burial customs

After more than 400 rooms have been excavated the total number of individual buried within
the settlement did not surpass 70 individuals (Esin and Harmankaya 1999:126). All these
burials were located sub-floor inside buildings. The dead were placed in pits cut through the
floor during the occupation of the building. The buried are people of both sexes and all ages.
There is a variety of skeletal body postures; from burials in a hocker (fetal) position to
extended skeletons facing upwards. Others are lying on one side, occasionally with the legs
bent at the knees (Esin and Harmankaya 1999). The orientation of the burials varies within
the buildings, likewise does the number of individuals inside them (Düring 2006).

The male population had individuals up to the age of 55-57 years of age, while the majority of
females died between the ages of 20-25. The skeletal remains of these women show spinal
deformities indicating that they had to carry heavy loads. This does not itself prove that there
was a division of labour between the sexes. The fact that the men seem to have outlived the
women might be interpreted as sign that the women were subject to more strenuous physical
labour than their male counterparts (Esin and Harmankaya 1999:130). From Natufian Abu
Hureyra there are similar osteological signs; such as pathologies in metatarsals, phalanges,
arm, and shoulder joints - being specific to females resulting from habitual kneeling in the use

42
of saddle querns (Molleson 1989:357f). The Neolithic evidence show indications of increased
physical workload in the osteological material on both genders, were the male skeletons show
signs of joint disease and trauma arguably caused by cutting timber and tilling (Wright
2000:115).

Children represent 37. 8 % of the deceased, with 43.7% of them passed away within the first
year after birth (Esin and Harmankaya 1999). The skeletal remains are complete and with
articulations intact, indicating that the burials have been primary. The graves contain either
single or double burials. On one occasion two graves were found under the floor of room AB,
belonging to an adjacent court (HG) with a large domed mudbrick oven paved with blocks of
basalt. In one of the graves the skeletons of a young woman and an elderly man; in the other a
young woman buried together with her baby. The young woman had apparently undergone
trepanation and survived only a few days after the operation. All skeletons were in the hocker
position (Esin and Harmankaya 1999:124). From a different grave a woman shows signs of
being scalped immediately after her death, according to the cut marks on her skull. A
remarkable high number; as many as 55% of the skeletons show signs of being burned. The
burial under the floor AB is accommodated by walls with the interior side were painted in a
purplish red colour. The oven in HG indicates that this was indeed ―special individuals of an
elite class‖; claiming it can be compared to the ―Terrazzo‖ Building at Çayöyü and the
―Temple‖ Building at Nevalı Çori and therefore have been a shrine used for religious
ceremonies (Esin and Harmankaya 1999:124). Many of the burials contain burial goods
consisting of necklaces and bracelets made of beads of various sorts (Düring 2006:86f).

70 burials in over 400 rooms suggest that some form of selection took place of who was
buried at the site, implementing that AB indeed could be the residence or resting place of
people influential in terms of both economy and political power (Esin and Harmankaya 1999).

Rooms containing hearths are more likely to contain burials; as many as 77% (Düring
2006:89). Düring (2006) argues that the number of burials could be an underrepresentation
inhered at the site, since a large part of the settlement remain unexcavated beneath the baulks.
On the other hand: later excavations which have been published suggest that burials were not
a general feature at Aşıklı Höyük (Düring 2006:88) and therefore the suggestions given by
Esin and Harmankaya (1999) of burials being a privilege of the elite class do seem plausible.

There has not been found a cemetery or any other sign of where the rest of the population
might have been disposed of post mortem. This issue is not only limited to Aşıklı Höyük:

43
there is also a lack of cemeteries on the PPNB ―mega-sites‖ in the Levant, such ‗Ain Ghazal
in the Jordan Valley (Bienert et al. 2004). According to Rollefson (2001:75) on the case of
‗Ain Ghazal: the total occupation span divided by the total amount of burials show that there
was one burial every decade (see also Bienert et al. 2004:158). Doing the same with the
material of Aşıklı Höyük shows the same pattern: one burial every 11.4 years (based on
numbers in this text). The interpretation that there was a cult of the elite in the greater
Levantine area does not seem farfetched according to these numbers. It seems that in Aşıklı
Höyük, as in the rest of the Anatolian and Levantine area (see Bienert et al. 2004:162), the
burial and any other post mortem treatment was arguably an ―upper class‖ phenomenon.
Bongofsky opposes this view, referring to the diverseness of individuals in both sex and age
in the graves (Bongofsky in Bienert et al. 2004:163). The burials including such a wide range
of individuals do not directly coherent with the image of an ―upper class‖ phenomenon. Gebel
(Gebel in Bienert et al. 2004:166) underlines this criticism by calling Rollefson‘s calculation a
generalisation of a ―snapshot‖ in time. Burials could have been removed or replaced over
time, giving a wrong image of the burials as belonging to the elite. Kuijt suggest an
alternative perspective: ―(...) the Neolithic dead are not under-represented: rather, it is the
architecture in PPNB settlements that are over-represented‖ (Kuijt in Bienert et al. 2004:167),
meaning that in many cases archaeologists have drastically overestimated the extent to which
all areas of PPNB sites were occupied simultaneously. As for Aşıklı Höyük and other sites in
the area: low numbers of burials in comparison with occupation span does not directly
indicate a cult of the elite.

§ 5.2.4 – Hearths
At Aşıklı Höyük the hearths are rectangular and usually placed in one of the corners of the
rooms, ranging in size from 2.97 m2 to 0.48 m2 (Düring 2006:84). Large stones with a suitable
flat shape were used to create an upright edge that stood approximately 20 cm above the level
of the floor. On the short side of the hearth the upright edge is missing to make a fire mouth.
It is also here the ash is the most concentrated. Pebbles along the edges and base of the hearth
seem to have been covered by a thin layer of plaster. Only in a few cases there is a trace of
something recognized as a flue (Özbaşaran 1998; Esin and Harmankaya 1999:122; Sey
1999:12).

44
An estimated 30-40% of all the rooms at Aşıklı Höyük have hearths (Düring 2006:84f;
Steadman 2004:537; Özbaşaran 1998:556; Esin and Harmankaya 1999). This estimate is
based on partially damaged and eroded structures possibly giving a number lower than
accurate. Based on a limited group of fully exposed buildings 54% of single room units
contained a hearth, while only 29% of the multiple room units. The average percentage on
base of these building units is 47%: probably a more realistic estimate for the site in total
(Düring 2006:85).

Hearths do not occur in a courtyard context, and are more represented in single room
dwellings than multiple room units (Steadman 2004). Still: multiple room units do have a
substantial number of hearths (Düring 2006:86). Steadman suggests that the ―multiroom
dwellings may have functioned as ―incomplete‖ houses for new families still heavily
dependent on the larger extended group‖ (Steadman 2004:539). The buildings containing the
hearths do not show particular characteristics that distinguish them from structures without
hearths; neither do they differ in size or special orientation. Even the hearth itself does not
follow an apparent norm in terms of size or location. The position varies considerably, but it
always has one side to the wall. The positioning of the heart does not seem to be determined
by general macro-ecological factors, such as prevailing wind directions, nor determined by
cultural norms regarding spatial features within buildings (Özbaşaran 1998:556).

The hearth does not seem to be subject to a random placement inside the buildings: it is
consistently located at the same spot throughout a very long building sequence. This indicates
that their positions were not chosen arbitrarily. When a location for the heart was chosen it
was important that the placement did not change in later rebuilding sequences of the structure
(Düring 2006:86). Unlike Çatalhöyük; the hearths did not follow an internal order that
necessarily placed them below the rooftop entrance. There is no evidence for ladderpost scars
due to the assumed use of freestanding ladders, making the location of the entrance uncertain.
Aşıklı Höyük does not seem to have any evidence for ovens.

45
§ 5.2.5 – Structures

Plate 5.1 – Stratigraphy of the deep sounding at Aşıklı Höyük (Photo: Kvæstad, 2010)

Similar to Çatalhöyük; Aşıklı Höyük had a tradition to reconstruct or rebuild earlier

structures. It followed a pattern where the structures were built ―exactly on the same spot and
with the same alignment as earlier buildings, using older walls as a foundation‖ (Düring
2006:93). The structural continuity at Aşıklı Höyük is outstanding, but there is no information
how long the use-life of a building was. If one estimates the same lifespan for a structure at
Aşıklı Höyük as it was in Çatalhöyük, one could look at an age of 30 to 60 years before
reconstruction occurred (Mellaart 1964:64). If this assumption correct; the deep sounding
4H/G from phases 2I up to 2B (eight layers in total) (see Plate 5.1) show that the time span of
a structure could be from 240 to 480 years. Looking outside of Central Anatolian Neolithic,

46
this type of building continuity is unparalleled both in ethnography and archaeology (Hodder
1998a; Düring 2006:93). This remarkable structural continuity may suggest a social system in
which buildings where not privately owned, since one would expect them to be modified on a
regular basis. It can be assumed that the rooms were distributed amongst the community
members according to the change in both needs and statuses (Düring and Marciniak
2006:175).

The building practises maintained their characteristics throughout the centuries. It has been
claimed that the building continuity is a self-evident feature, since it is deriving from a
particular set of foundation practices that can be explained in a functionalistic way(Esin et al.
1991:130). Düring (2006) claims on the other hand that the extreme degree of continuity is
inadequately explained by functionalism alone, since the structures located adjacent to open
spaces could easily expanded or shrunk according to the specific needs, but instead remained
identical (ibid 2006:95). These functionalist parameters can also not explain the continued
rebuilding of the hearths, which always are build on the same spot. Individual hearth
sequences are often separated with 40 cm of soil, and therefore there is no apparent reason
(unlike the buildings) why the hearths should consistently be constructed in the same corner
as in the successive buildings. In many cases neighbouring buildings do place their respective
hearths in different corners. As mentioned before; micro-cosmological special codes or wind
direction does not seem to be decisive for the positioning of the hearth (Özbaşaran 1998). The
structural and material remains indicate that the buildings were continuous entities with some
form of fixed special identity were the special organization could not be changed by the
temporary occupant.

Clearly structural continuity was important of great importance for the inhabitants of Aşıklı
Höyük. The reason for this has partly been explained because they [the people] had a rigid
adherence to traditions in terms of structural reproduction (e.g. Özdoğan 2002). Düring
(2006) resent to the ―traditional view‖ since it is ―[In short,] labelling a society as
conservative does not answer the question why the people under consideration were
conservative‖ (Düring 2006:96). As an alternative approach, Hodder (1998a) refers to a
historical dimension of the building to be of such great importance that ―people came to be
bound between walls, metaphorically domesticated (...)‖ (Hodder 1998a:89). Hodder interpret
the walls as giving historical associations to the people living within them: giving a collective
conscience lasting through time. The difference between this interpretation and the
‗conservative approach‘ is the potential explanation to why structural reproduction could have

47
been important for the inhabitants of Aşıklı Höyük. The identities of the inhabitants were
projected to the structural outcome of the buildings. The generality of this position is not
meaningful on its own. It is not certain that the inhabitants of Aşıklı Höyük were aware of the
total amount of building there was in the sequence in total. Perhaps the history of a building
did not concern them in the same way as archaeologists like to think. Düring gives a third
interpretation: the outcome of the reproduction of buildings could be a result of a series of
episodes in which buildings were constructed along lines of their direct predecessors. In this
view the inhabitants may not been aware of the numerous earlier structures below, but only
the building on the surface (Düring 2006:96). This still does not explain the reproduction of
the hearth; indicating a cultural attitude towards rebuilding, unaffected by pragmatic views
concerning rigid economic and spatial factors. The lack of change over time suggests that the
inhabitants of Aşıklı Höyük had a view of the past as a precedent for the present: a vital part
of society that was ‗reborn‘ in each reproduction, manifested in its building continuity. The
structural reconstruction is a regional feature for Central Anatolia. With the exception of
Jericho, most of the evidence from PPNB sites in the Levant indicates that structures were not
reconstructed in the same loci, and some location structures differ in dates by several hundred
years (Kuijt in Bienert et al. 2004:168).

The buildings at Aşıklı Höyük are clustered into what has been interpreted as neighbourhoods
(Düring 2006:97; Esin and Harmankaya 1999:125; Steadman 2004:537). As this is a vague
perception of the structural outlay of the community, Steadman (2004) describes them as
clustered single and multiroom houses forming compounds, apparently sharing courtyard
space for production activities and practicing joint cocking and food consumption. Little can
be said on the food storage, since there were no remains after storage bins (Steadman
2004:539), although storage rooms may be identified due to comparing structures on other
sites (e.g. Çatalhöyük) (Bogaard 2009). The average room size is 12 m2, with from two or
three up to five or six clustered dwelling forming a ‗neighbourhood‘ or compound (Steadman
2004). The interpretation of the borders of these ‗neighbourhoods‘ are problematic, since
much of the site still lies under the baulks, is in situ or eroded (Düring 2006).

The distribution of single and multi room buildings does not seem to follow a pattern other
than that the residential clusters seem to be divided by narrow alleys 0.5 – 1.0 m wide (Esin
and Harmankaya 1999:125), or open courtyard areas up to Ø 4 m (Düring 2006). The interior
of multiroom buildings had openings in the partitioned walls, providing access to the
individual rooms. Between the one building and the next there seems to be no

48
communication, since there was no indication of doors in the exterior mudbrick walls. Since
the buildings themselves do not have an entrance that can be traced archaeologically on the
base of the walls; access had to be provided either through window-like openings high on the
walls or from the flat roofs (Esin and Harmankaya 1999:125). Roof access is also known from
Çatalhöyük (Hodder 1999, 2006, 2007), making this entrance more plausible.

Aşıklı Höyük does also have buildings that are bigger in size but without hearths. These are
interpreted as public buildings (Steadman 2004:539) or ‗building complexes‘ (Düring
2006:101). These are seen as some of the most enigmatic buildings found at the site, and
diverge both in size and spatial organization. One of them (complex HV) being at up to 20
times larger than the largest loam buildings (i.e. 25 m2 x 20= 500 m2) (Düring 2006:101).
They have a multitude of rooms and encompass elaborate and large internal courts; something
that is not found in any other buildings. The walls are more robust and massive than other
buildings, in some cases being referred to as ―monumental walls‖, accompanied by parallel
outer walls with relatively narrow space in between (Düring 2006:102fff). Steadman (2004)
argues that Court T (see Düring 2006:102fff) could be a relation with public building with
plausible ritual nature due to its elaborate painted floors. Thus may indicate an existence of a
village leader, as proclaimed by the work of J. Yakar (2003).

The interpretation of these buildings is difficult. The fact that they clearly differentiate from
the domestic loam buildings indicates that they had special value in the society. They also do
not incorporated into the clustered ‗neighbourhoods‘; indicating that they served several
neighbourhoods or the local community at large (Düring 2006). With 500 m2 the range of
activities that could have taken place in this space could easily incorporate several hundred
people. Yet: given that the estimated population of Aşıklı Höyük may have run into the
thousands (Düring 2006:101); only a selected group in the total population could have used
the building at a given occasion. There is a variety of hypotheses regarding the nature of these
monumental structures. There are other examples of these restricted monumental spaces on
other sites in the Levantine PPNB (such as Nevali Çori, Behida, ‗Ain Ghazal), suggesting that
they were used by an elite or for practicing different social initiation rites (Rollefson
2001:82fff; Verhoeven 2002).

49
§ 5.2.6 – Other material
There are no finds of any artefacts carrying religious connotations, symbolic or imagery, at
Aşıklı Höyük. Not in the buildings, courtyards, dumps or open-workshop areas (Esin and
Harmankaya 1999: 129). The only finds include flint tools, counted as imports. Other than
this there is found one single animal figurine made of clay that can hardly tell us anything of
the religious belief of the inhabitants. The limited amount of burials compared to the
estimated population makes it very likely that there may have been a cemetery were the
deceased have been buried, but it is not found (Esin and Harmankaya 1999). There is also an
absence of storage bins making the distinction on autonomous households difficult (Steadman
2004).

§ 5.3 – Çatalhöyük
Çatalhöyük is located 52 km south-east of Konya city, and 11 km north of Çumra situated on
the Konya Plain in south-western Anatolia c. 1000 metres above sea level (Singh 1974;
Mellaart 1967, 1978). The main mound itself stood originally 17 metres high in the flat
landscape; making it visible from great distances (Mellaart 1967, 1978). Site itself covers 13
ha (Hodder 1996; Hodder and Cessford 2004:17).

It is located on the former course of the Çarsamba Çay River, which flows from Lake
Beyşehir onto the Konya Plain (Düring and Marciniak 2006). This made the area mound
appear as marshy wetlands, providing a fertile environment for the people of that time (Atalay
and Hastorf 2006:288).Çatalhöyük is in reality two mounds. The East Mound is the biggest
and most known, dated back to the Early Neolithic period. The West Mound, also referred to
as Küçük Höyük (―small mound‖) is located on the other side of the river and is considerably
smaller, dating back to the Late Neolithic and Early Chalcolithic times (Atalay and Hastorf
2006:285; Mellaart 1967). It is assumed that the East Mound was abandoned and relocated to
the West Mound c. 5700 BC (Mellaart 1967:12).

Excavations by the Çatalhöyük Research Project have taken place in five areas in and around
the East Mound, including South, North, Bach, KOPAL and Summit (including TP) areas
(Atalay and Hastorf 2006:285; Hodder, Cessford, and Farid 2007).

50
§ 5.3.1 – Site history
The name Çatalhöyük, meaning ―fork mound‖ in Turkish, presumably got its name from path
leading from the nearby town of Çumra to the south that divides into three individual paths at
the mound. Naturally it was known long before any archaeologists first surveyed, and was a
place surrounded by superstition into modern times (Hodder 2006:13f).

James Mellaart first discovered the prehistoric settlement mound of Çatalhöyük (then referred
to as Çatal Hüyük) in November 1952 in the second season of a three-year survey (1951-
1953) in southern Turkey, originally for trying to find evidence for the mysterious ―Sea-
Peoples‖ who invaded the eastern Mediterranean 1200 BC (Mellaart 1978:7). The first further
analysis of the mound was done by Mellaart joined by some friends in November 1958. The
year before excavations at Hacılar, a site in south-western Anatolia, were dated to 7500 BC;
4500 years older than scholars previously had believed possible for the area. Making this as
old as anything known in Mesopotamia at the time, it proved that Anatolia was no cultural
backwater (Mellaart 1964, 1964, 1965, 1967, 1975, 1978; Balter 2005). Hacılar had an
absence of occupation for almost millennium, making a cultural gap that became filled with
the excavations at Çatalhöyük (Singh 1974:85).

The mound of Çatalhöyük was estimated to cover 32 acres; 600 meters long and 350 meters
wide, with 17 metre height above the alluvial plain surface divided into fourteen successive
building levels resulting in an occupational period from 7100 to 6300 BC (Singh 1974:85;
Mellaart 1978:13). Later excavations lead by Ian Hodder show some adjustments: 33.5 acres
(16 ha), 21 metres in height and an occupation dated 7400 – 6000 BC (Hodder 2006:7;
Hodder and Cessford 2004:20).

Çatalhöyük was one of the biggest Neolithic sites at the time: with a population estimated to
be up to 6000 people made it at least four times larger than Neolithic Jericho, known to be the
largest and oldest settlement at the time (Singh 1974:85). Mellaart described it as representing
―(...) the earliest cradle of civilisation we know of‖ (Mellaart 1978:14). The entrance through
a shaft from the roof was said to be a characteristic of Çatalhöyük (Mellaart 1965, 1967,
1975, 1978; Singh 1974), but has later been recognized as a tradition observed on
predeceasing sites (i.e. Aşıklı Höyük) (Esin and Harmankaya 1999; Düring 2006). Prior to the
1960‘s there was little evidence to suggest an early development of the first farmers outside
the Fertile Crescent; the idea of the first farmers cultivation wild cereals from at the hills of
the hilly flanks and domesticating wild sheep seemed as the most preferable area for early

51
domestication (Hodder 2006:14). ―The extreme cold of the Anatolian winter‖, as the later
Director of the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara Seton Lloyd noted in 1956 (Lloyd
1956:53), would not make the transition from hunting and gathering to a domestic way of life.

Apart from the size; the elaborate wall decoration and a variety of graves embedded in what
was seen as sleeping platforms, superimposed bull‘s heads with horn, figurines and general
structural orientation of the community gave Çatalhöyük international publicity. The
European archaeologists at the time talked about archaeology as being the ―recovery of
rubbish‖ and hardly ever yielding evidence of man‘s thought. This had to be revised due to
many of the one-roomed houses curious internal decoration, thus in plan and construction no
different from other houses (Singh 1974). In Mellaart view serving the special purpose as
shrines or sanctuaries (Singh 1974:89; Mellaart 1967; 1978:19; Steadman 2004:542). The
excavations led by Mellaart proved that the Neolithic produced massive settlements also
outside the Fertile Crescent, giving a new view of the spreading of sedentary societies, and
the later transition into Europe (Hodder 1992; 2006:15).

After the extensive excavations led by Mellaart that started in 1961 and ended in 1965, the
site was not further excavated until Ian Hodder started the Çatalhöyük Research Project
(ÇRP) with excavations in 1993 (Hodder 2007; Hamilton 1998:7; Hodder 1996, 2000).
Hodder acknowledged the potential of further investigation in terms of symbolism its possible
connection to economic domestication of plants and animals (Hodder 1992:16; Steadman
2004:542). The excavations led by Mellaart excavated quick and removed a lot of material, so
only a limited amount remained in situ (Hodder 2006:17). Hodder, known to be one of the
founders of Postprocessual Archaeology (Hodder 1985, 1991, 1996, 2002), changed the
approach to the remaining material: from Mellaart extensive (quantitative) to an intensive
(qualitative) analysis of the remains. Since the 1960s the understanding of the Neolithic of the
Middle East has changed dramatically: pushing back dates and for early sedentary life and
showing how diverse the process of early settlement life really was and thereby making
Çatalhöyük less unique (Hodder 2007:106). New techniques also conducted in further studies
of Mellaart excavations, throwing further light on the large-scale material previously
obtained. The use of residue analysis analysing what people ate, and geological analysis
evaluating lithics and obsidian trade and exchange are only some aspects of newer research.
Hodders approach also gave room for asking new questions about social life within the
Çatalhöyük community based on the elaborate symbolism on the site. One of the most
remarkable things is that there is little reference to domestication ―despite the fact that

52
Çatalhöyük occurred well after the initial domestication of plants and animals, and despite the
economic dependence on plants and animals; symbolism focuses on wild animals‖ (Hodder
2006:18). Getting to know how people lived in all aspects of life remains as one of the key
questions for continuing analysis of the site.

The site of Çatalhöyük is said to provide a unique window on the societies of the Central
Anatolian Neolithic (Düring 2006:130). There are findings of rich symbolic imagery in the
form of wall paintings, mouldings on interior wall surfaces, and figurines. A large number of
intramural sub-floor burials with variable grave goods give a good indication on the treatment
and great importance of the corpus mortem and its value to society. One of the clear
differences to Aşıklı Höyük is that the settlement found at Çatalhöyük laced a public domain,
such as courtyards and other structures (Düring 2006, 2001). Later excavations revealed many
mudbrick buildings abutting each other, each with interior features such as ovens, hearths, and
alternating platforms; giving inspiration to various theories on spatial symbolism (see Lewis-
Williams 2004). Also found is complex art, mouldings, and architectural features said to
attribute the house-like architecture to expressions of an active system of ritual beliefs. As
with Aşıklı Höyük: detailed excavations reveal that the plastered floors in the buildings had
been cleared of most artefacts before the systematic and ritualized abandonment, making
many of the mobile artefacts (i.e. figurines) ex situ (Atalay and Hastorf 2006:285).

§ 5.3.2 – Dates
Çatalhöyük is often referred to as the 9000 year old settlement in the middle of the Konya
Plain (e.g. Hodder 2006, 2007). The site was established at the end of the Aceramic Neolithic
also known as the ECA periods II and III; concurrent with the PPNB periods in the Levant
(Asouti 2006; Özbaşaran and Buitenhuis 2002; Rollefson 2003). The four earliest levels (Pre-
XII) at Çatalhöyük appear to be aceramic (Hodder and Cessford 2004:19). The levels XII-VI
(7000 – 6600 BC) and V-I (6600 – 6000 BC) respectively belong to the Early and Late
Ceramic Neolithic period (Düring and Marciniak 2006:176). The Neolithic East Mound
settlement was initially established roughly 7400 BC and occupied for nearly one and a half
millennia (7400 – 6000 BC) (Hodder 2006:7). Other estimates the East Mound occupation to
last from 7400 – 6200 BC (Cessford 2001; Hodder and Cessford 2004), within that time
growing to over 13 ha (Atalay and Hastorf 2006:285; Düring 2006:130).

53
§ 5.3.3 – Burial customs
The excavations at Çatalhöyük gave an impressive testimony of intramural traditions on a
scale that was unprecedented in the study of the Near Easter Neolithic at the time of their
discovery (Mellaart 1964, 1965, 1967, 1975, 1978). A burial at Çatalhöyük normally consist
of a complete individual buried below the house floors. These intramural sub-floor burials
were for the most part placed in a pit constructed by digging through the floor while the
building was occupied. After the body was placed, the pit was closed and the floor was
patched. Given that the floors were replastered up to 450 times in houses that had a estimated
lifespan from 70 to 100 years (Hodder 2007:108); the precise location and extent of a burial
would arguably have been less obvious as time passed on (Düring 2006). On the other hand
by digging the grave one also had to dig into the past, obtaining what Hodder and Cessford
refer to as specific memory (2004:33f). Some intramural burials were placed after the
occupation of a building being associated with the foundation deposits of a building, or placed
during their abandonment (Düring 2006). ―While in some instances it was clearly permissible
for later interments to disturb earlier bodies, there are clear indications that the precise
locations and nature of the earlier burials were remembered years or even decades later‖
(Hodder and Cessford 2004:34). Pits were du down to retrieve sculptures as well as heads of
selected humans. Both Building 1 and Building 6 a skeleton was found buried beneath the
house floors with the head removed and with cut mark traces on the upper vertebrae, denoting
that there had to be at least some knowledge of the skeletons locations.

Wall art portraying decapitated humans are a well frequently used motive, but not as common
in a burial context. Until 2004 there was only found two headless skeletons. Removal and
reuse of human crania may imply an attempt to construct link between a given social group
and specific ancestors. The heads had been removed from the body after about a year of
excarnation. The headless bodies got treated in special ways at death, giving the impression
that specific individuals were chosen for this treatment in advance, and these particular
locations were remembered (Hodder and Cessford 2004).

Contrariwise Düring suggests that given the constant replastering of the floors and no
apparent permanent physical reminders of a graves presence, the precise location and extent
of the burials were not directly obvious in later phases of occupation (Düring 2006:201). This
differs from the intramural sub-floor burials found at Tell Halula – located some 320 km
southeast of Çatalhöyük: clay plugs sealed the burials located near the entrance, making their
location highly visible over time to both visitor and resident (Guerrero et al. 2009).

54
Most burials are placed in individual primary internments, but multiple individual graves are
found as well. The new burials often disrupted the remains of earlier burials (e.g. Building 1 –
see below), either pushing them aside or rearranging them, resulting in an anarchic
displacement of the osteological remains (Hamilton 1998:8). Seemingly having little concern
for the integrity of the individual deceased person (Düring 2006). On the other hand a series
of burials assigned to the sub-phase B1.1B was excavated 1997 did not get disturbed by later
activities. In these cases, the grave cuts for these burials were ambiguous to define and
seemingly all the burials in any event placed within the foundation deposits as they were
being laid. Whether hollows were scooped out to hold the body or the body was laid as the
material was dumped in, is difficult to assess. Perhaps this is less significant than the fact that
the bodies were placed in more or less contemporaneously with the deposits which
themselves were dumped in en masse and fairly rapidly (Lucas 1997; Cessford 2007b:415).

The location of the burials are often, but not as a rule, found beneath the compartments
located at the north-eastern part of the living room. Mellaart (1962:47) interpreted these
compartments as sitting and sleeping areas. This intimate relationship between the living and
the dead may show the close ties people had to their departed ancestors. As Düring pertinently
portrays:

―a relation in which some group members were resting temporarily, whereas others
‗rested‘ on a more permanent basis‖ (2006:202).

Human remains are also found outside the intramural context: Two burials were found in
midden areas, and it is not longer possible to determine how many burials were located in
midden areas (if any) during Mellaart excavations in the 1960‘s (see Mellaart 1967:204).
Fragments of human bones were found among animal bones that are described as being
discarded in a similar way as other bones. Most of these human bones show evidence on bite
marks by dogs (Düring 2006:201), indicating little or no post mortem treatment and
seemingly being dealt with as household waste.

The ‗vulture scenes‘, in combination with the fact that many skeletons were found incomplete
and therefore seen as secondary burials, has been interpreted as a account for post mortem
excarnation (Mellaart 1962; 1963:97f). These scenes are enigmatic paintings interpreted as
charnel houses in which the bodies of the deceased were excarnated (Mellaart 1964:93;
1967:204). Newer research concludes that excarnation was not a common practise at
Çatalhöyük (Russell and Düring 2006:75; Hamilton 1998:7). Physical anthropologists have

55
showed that the majority of skeletal remains were subject to primary burials (Düring
2006:203). There are no physical signs of excarnation, although secondary burials do occur
(Andrews, Molleson, and Boz 2005:274f). Some would argue that the ‗vulture scenes‘ might
have been practiced on people not buried in situ sub-floor: portraying a mythical event rather
than something physically happening on a regular basis.

Building 1, also known as ÇRP 1 (Çatalhöyük Research Project - Düring 2006), is where
most burials are found and counts just under 60 buried individuals6. This exceeds the highest
number reported during the excavations led by Mellaart, and is unparalleled during in recent
excavations. The building has been excavated in its entity and presents a rich picture of an
extraordinary complex structure. The structure is though incomplete, due to removal of
features and artefacts and later erosion (Cessford 2007b). Burial is limited to the main space
and occur during construction and in all of the main occupational phases and sub-phases. The
internments manifest themselves over several layers and there is a frequent disturbance of
earlier burials (Cessford 2007c).

Returning to the burials found in sub-phase B1.1B - a short lived phase probably lasting only
days or weeks having high concentrations of burials, and neonates in particular. It is
suggested that the burials had a connection to the structure: three neonates were buried in the
southwest; an adult female, who past away during childbirth, and a neonate were buried
together in the north-central part, and an older male was buried in the central-west area. These
burials generally occur in locations not later utilized for burials; mainly linked to death at the
time of birth. Neonates are not found in later burials in the building, making them distinctive
for B1.1B. Taking the lifespan and the high concentrations of burials in to consideration, one
could argue that there is a link between the birth of the building and the birth of people. The
old man aged over 60 may have represented a link to the death of the predeceasing Building
5, which was occupied for approximately 70 years (Cessford 2007c:541).

Some burials are related to transitional stages (e.g. B1.1B). The burial of the old male gives
the impression to relate to the abandonment of the previous Building 5, and the neonate
burials and the female burial seem linked to the following Building 1. Transitions seem to
have their place in the ritual world at Çatalhöyük, being important features in both
abandonment and rebuilding. It has to be said that many more burials do relate to transitional

6
Düring (2006:205) counts the grand total to be 64 buried individuals referring to Cessford (2007a); a work in
preparation at the time. Later Cessford himself counts in the overall discussion ―a total of just under 60
individuals represented‖ (2007c:541).

56
phases. Why the deaths of particular individuals correspond to transitional phases is unclear.
However; there seems to be significant connection between the demise of old males and
transitional phases (e.g. B1.1B, B1.2B, B1.2C, B1.3, B1.4 - Cessford 2007c:543).

The general picture of the numerous burials in Building 1 shows that they were interred in a
restricted area of the building; namely the compartments in the north-west, north-central, and
east-central locations. They are not found in other parts of the building or in the ante rooms
(Düring 2006:205), with the exception of the neonates buried in B1.1B in the south-western
part of the main room, who are interpreted as foundation burials (Cessford 2007c). Hodder
and Cessford see ―a tendency for different categories of people to be buried under different
platforms‖ (2004:23); arguing that more young people were buried beneath the northwest
platform F. 13 and more older individuals under the central east platform F. 37 in Building 1
(Cessford 2007b).

Building 1 had almost 60 burials and seemingly implement that it interred close to 60
individuals in the structure during its construction and occupation, of which at least 30 had to
be alive at the same time. This is to many to actually lived in the building daily basis, as it is
unlikely that Building 1 could house more than 10 individuals simultaneously based on the
size and probable sleeping arrangements (Hodder and Cessford 2004:31). All other buildings
excavated by the ÇRP have fewer burials. One remarkable find was located in Building
VIII.10/6 and (among others) contained an adult male burial with skull removed, due to the
cut marks on the upper vertebrae (Feature F.492). The absence of the skull has fronted the
idea that the skull itself may have been processed to be incorporated into the successor
building (Hodder and Cessford 2004:35). Most burials were primary, although many were
later disrupted, but a number of bones have been placed in secondary contexts, particularly
skulls (Hamilton 1998:8). An example of skull removal and further treatment is the exception
rather than the rule at Çatalhöyük. One remarkable exception was the intentional deposit
reported by Mellaart for building VII.21; containing four human skulls set on the floor
(1967:84; 1964:21). In general the Central Anatolian Neolithic is in contrast to the Levantine
PPNB: where the removal of skulls from graves and later replastering was a more common
practice (Bienert 1991; Kuijt 2000; Talalay 2004; Goren, Goring-Morris, and Segal 2001;
Verhoeven 2002).

An outstanding feature was found under the floor of VII.9/B50 that contained burials of seven
adults, four children, two infants, two neonates and one sheep. The lamb was co-buried with

57
an adult male in the north compartment. This is unique for Çatalhöyük: even though sheep are
by far one of the most common species at the site, they are almost non-present in the elaborate
animal symbolism at the site, including paintings, reliefs, and incorporation of animal parts
into architecture (Russell and Düring 2006).

At all of Çatalhöyük grave goods is not ubiquitous: many burials contain none, while others
contain rich assemblages. Most are ornaments or components of clothing such as tiny stone
beads (for necklaces), pendants, rings, and belt hooks. Occasionally burials include tools or
weapons. Generally rave goods was not a common custom (Hamilton 1998). Contrary to
earlier suggestions (e.g. Mellaart 1967:207f), burial goods does not seem to be related to the
gender of the deceased (Russell and Düring 2006).

Total 685 (100 %)

Adults 344 (50 %)
Adults specified Males 133 (39
%)
Females 173 (50
%)
Indeterminate 38 (11 %)
Adolescents 20 (3 %)
Juveniles 174 (25 %)
Age indeterminate 147 (22 %)
Table 5.1 - Minimum numbers of skeletons excavated at Çatalhöyük (Table 6.4 (ÇRP
data column) - Düring 2006:206)

The database of Düring (2006:206) present 685 burials, of which 580 can be assigned to
specific buildings which again are located to a total of 76 rooms. Of these 76 rooms the
majority were classified as living rooms (63 or 84 %), making the average burial per living
room 3.8. There are other buildings with a large number of burials such as VI.7 (29 burials),
VI.1 (32), F.V.1 (33), VIB.34 (43), VII.31-east (49); giving the impression that non-resident
people were buried there as well. This interpretation can be further confirmed by the fact that
many buildings contained no sub-floor burials at all. The majority of the uncovered living
rooms at Çatalhöyük, 74 out of 137 (54 %) did not have any sub-floor burials (Düring
2006:207).
58
The estimated population size range between 3500 and 8000 individuals (Hodder and
Cessford 2004:21), with a minimum estimate around 1500 – 2700 (Atalay and Hastorf 2006)
and the equivalent maximum being 10 000 (Balter 1998). Each household, thought to be
associated with a building, had between 6 and 8 people associated with it (Cessford 2005).
Looking at the numbers it seems unlikely that every person connected to a building got buried
under its floor; a similarity is shares with Aşıklı Höyük. Thus the broad representations of
ages and sexes the individual persons placed below the platforms of a building during its
occupation suggests a possible relationship between those buried beneath the floors and those
occupying the building or a group of related buildings (Hodder and Cessford 2004:22).

Unlike previous studies (e.g. Mellaart 1967:206; Todd 1976:67) one can in terms of the
demographic data not argue for any pattern concerning burial location; neither age nor sex
seems determining factors for deciding who was buried on-site. Even if this text mainly deals
with intramural burials and the foci of ritual and art is in house (see Last 1998), one still has
to bear in mind that burial activity took place off site and symbolic activity did occur outside
the building compound, as the case with bucrania (plastered cattle skulls) found on some
house roofs (Stevanovic and Tringham 1999).

§ 5.3.4 – Hearths and Ovens

At Çatalhöyük there are two types of fire installations dominating, hearths and ovens, with
occasional fire pit occurring in exterior areas. Hearths tend to be freestanding rectangular or
circular features lacking an elevated structure. They were reconstructed more often than
ovens. Ovens are larger domed oval structures built adjacent to, or at times partly within
exterior walls (Düring 2006:184). They are in most cases quite distinguishable and often
coexisted in the same buildings. Although their features served different purposes they shared
some key similarities: both features often had stone or clay balls included into their floors,
and loam was their main constructional component.

The vast majority of hearths and ovens occur in living rooms. Düring (2006) found that 132
of 149 hearths (89%) were located in living rooms. Likewise did 99 out of 125 ovens (79%).
The minority, 17 out of 149 hearths (11%) and 26 out of 125 ovens (20%), had loci outside of
a living room context. Their size is on average 0.73 m2 for the oven, and 0.42 m2 for the
hearth (Düring 2006:185). One may consider these averages of being to low, since many of
these features were incompletely preserved. The largest oven (Feature F.501) found in the

59
ÇRP excavations measure over 1 m2 in size, while the largest hearth (Feature F.96) measured
0.56 m2. Both these seem larger than average in their class, and commonly these features
seem to be somewhat smaller.

The orientations of the hearths and ovens have a clear concentration to the southern part of the
living room (Düring and Marciniak 2006). This corresponds well with the kitchen area of the
Çatalhöyük living rooms: they rarely occur in any parts of the building except occasional
hearths placed towards the centre of the room. The ovens are often placed in the southern
corners due to their dependence on support for their domed structures. Since hearths do not
have an elevated structures they tend to be feely positioned. Still; 64% of the hearts do occur
in the south-central area, positioned directly under the ladder entrances (Düring 2006:185f).
This suggests that the draft from the ladder entrance was important; implementing that it may
have been more frequently used than the ovens. This could again explain central positioning
as being related to its purpose of heating the living room. It has been argued that the heart was
the centre of the household and therefore both practically and ritually significant. From this
area a person could have the a complete overview of what is happening in the house at all
times, and it is suggested that the central platforms near the southern wall of the living room
were the focus area of daily activities (Atalay and Hastorf 2006:291). The hearths and ovens
were as much part of the repetitive practises as the building itself: In Building 17 a hearth in
the south eastern corner was rebuilt several times (Hodder and Cessford 2004:32f).

§ 5.3.5 – Structures
One of the remarkable features at both Çatalhöyük and Aşıklı Höyük are the structural
repetitive practices that occurred over many generations. Rebuilding occurred on top of
previous rooms throughout most of Çatalhöyük‘s occupational history (Atalay and Hastorf
2006; Hodder and Cessford 2004; Cessford 2007c, 2007b, 2007a; Hodder 2007; Cauvin
2000). The buildings are at large not stable entities that are built and thereafter inhabited to
the end of their uselife. They are in what Düring (2006:160) refers to as ―always in a state of
flux‖ and transformed substantually on a regular basis; giving away only a partly view of our
knowledge of rather complex reality that was in place at Çatalhöyük. In the soundings of both
at Çatalhöyük and Aşıklı Höyük buildings can be traced though centuries of occupation,
involving up to seven complete rebuilding episodes together with many minor renovations
(Düring 2006:161). The lack of stones for building walls can not alone explain the structural

60
reproduction, since the internal features also were subject to the continuous rebuilding. Plaster
was present on all wall and floor surfaces, and most certainly occurred on a regular basis
(Mellaart 1964:60; Matthews, French, and Cutler 1996; Hodder 2007). Matthews, French, and
Cutler (1996:306) refer to a micro-morphological selection revealing up to 160 layers (80
couplets) of wall plaster. More recently Matthews (2005:367) refers to replasterings with
associated residues occurring up to 450 times with fine white plaster layers in the living room
of building 5 (North Area). This must have occurred on a monthly or yearly basis in a house
that had an estimated use life of 70 to 100 years (Hodder 2007:108; Cessford 2007c:541;
Matthews 2006:368). Other rooms; such as the adjacent spaces 155 to 157 to the living room
in Building 5, have only three or four orange and brown silty clay plaster layers and were
probably used primary for storage purposes (Matthews 2005). Such differences in plaster
practices from one room to another may provide important clues for ―the reconstruction of
relative importance and functions of spaces‖ (Düring 2006:165). The construction,
maintenance, and alternation of the structures and internal features were in other words
constant and ongoing processes at Çatalhöyük.

Repetitive patterning at Çatalhöyük is seen not only in the buildings itself: location of art,
burials, obsidian, hoards, ovens and ladder-entries has been identified in over 200 houses
excavated by Mellaart in the 1960s as being of a repetitive nature. Repetitive patterning as
being a product of daily practice and social memory has been argued by Hodder and Cessford
to be ―inseparable in that regulation is not simply imposed at Çatalhöyük but is constructed
through the habituation of practises‖ (2004:31). The lack of writing forced different
mechanism of social reproduction, as for instance construction of social memory.

The dismantling of a house it was often done with great care: undergoing vigilant cleaning
and placing of objects, filled with clean soil, and the new house was built on the stumps of the
walls of the pervious house (Düring 2006). Upon the platform constituted by the truncated
walls and the intermediate fill, the successor structure was subsequently erected, with its wall
usually exactly replicating the earlier walls (Düring 2001, 2005), with the first floor
constructed on top of the fill. In some cases people were buried before construction of a new
building was begun (Cessford 2007a). There are also cases of mouldings being retrieved from
a building that had already been infilled (Hodder and Cessford 2004:33), pointing to the fact
that practices associated with abandonment did not always take place as previously expected.

61
Some places with up to six rebuildings in the same place (Hodder 2007:108). This shows that
the repetition of arrangement in the social space is remarkable and has led to the hypothesis
that social life was organised at least partly through the routines and practices of domestic
socialization (Hodder 2006; Hodder and Cessford 2004). In some cases fixed features in the
dismantled building were stabilised so that they could be integrated in the foundation of the
new building, for instance the domed ovens were filled in and portholes were blocked
(Cessford 2007a; Farid 2007; Matthews 2006). This could be entirely for functional purposes;
as it simply may have been a way to assure a strong foundation of the building. Alternatively
it could have a symbolic purpose: it may have been of great importance to preserve the
structural integrity of the building that was abandoned (Düring 2006). The infillings are also
coherent with the treatment of moulded features on the walls that will be discussed later.

Building 5 (Cessford 2007c, 2007b) was deliberately dismantled in this way, both in terms of
structural elements and destruction wall reliefs. After the dismantling process Building 1 was
constructed on top of the dismantled building. He interpretation used by Cessford states that
―(...) it may represent a deliberate symbolic act which ‗closed‘ the lifecycle of one building
and ‗opened‘ the lifecycle of another‖ (2007b:408).

The division between shrines and houses proposed by Mellaart at Çatalhöyük is no longer
seen as valid. Equally problematic is the term ‗ritually elaborate building‘ as used by Düring
(2001). There are clearly different scales of architectural and artefactual complexity (Düring
2005, 2001; Düring and Marciniak 2006), but how building complexity is assessed is a
difficult issue (Cessford 2007c). Mellart claimed that the shrines were the frequently, but not
always, the largest building in the quarter (Mellaart 1967:77). Cessford claims therefore that
on that basis both Building 5 (50.5 m2) and Building 1 (48.6 m2) as unlikely to be shrines,
since the surface scrape shows larger buildings in the vincity (2007c:538). Both buildings
would belong in the middle and upper part of the size spectrum based on Mellaarts estimates
from the 1960‘s, were the mean overall size was 35 – 52 m2 (Düring 2001:5).

62
§ 5.3.6 – Building 80

Plate 5.2 – Upper left: wall installation on F.2533 (N. wall). Upper right: Space 373 in
the back with oven and ladderpost marks on wall (space 135). Lower left: The hearth in
space 135. Lower right: profile of wall plaster layers on F.5014 (eastern wall) (picture:
Kvæstad, 2010)

On my fieldtrip in August 2010 visiting both Çatalhöyük and Aşıklı Höyük, I got a particular
interest for Building 80 located in the South Area of the East Mound of Çatalhöyük. Building
80 has many of the features discussed in this paper; making it a good example to clarify the
structural orientation of a normative building at Çatalhöyük. According to personal
communication with archaeologist Roddy Regan excavating Building 80 revealed that it
corresponds with layer VI-a. The building consist two rooms where the main room (Space

63
135) is oriented to the north, and a possible storage room (pers. com. Roddy Regan) (Space
373) to the south, both linked by an access hole or crawl hole (Farid 2009:14).

The northern room Space 135 includes all the features found at Building 80. The room is
delineated by the northern (F.2533), eastern (F.5014), and western (F.5036) walls. The
southern side consists of two walls (F.5037, F.5038) separated by the crawl hole into southern
room Space 373. The best preserved feature is the northern wall standing over 2.1m in height
consisting of at least 18 courses of mudbrick and incorporates a post, a beam slot and
horizontal grooves. The grooves were of a purely decorative nature and stretched horizontally
between the post settings on the northern and eastern walls. All walls in Space 135 show
multiple plaster layers (see lower right – plate 5.2) with traces of red pigment apparent within
some plaster layers on the eastern wall. An oven (F.5041) is placed against the southern wall
(F.5038). There are signs of a ladderpost scars on both F.5038 and the floor indicates that the
entrance to the roof must have been in the area above the oven. The hearth is approximately
1m from the oven towards the central-west of the room7. Post scars line the eastern and
western walls, while another pillar lies in the centre of the northern wall. There is also a
small, deep-set oval niche within the eastern wall (Farid 2009).

The southern room Space 373 shares walls F.5037 and F.5038 that divide it from the northern
room. Respectively F.5039 and F.5040 form the western and eastern walls. The southern
room has not been plastered in the same extent as the northern room. This may be due to the
fact that this building was partly burned, or that it was a storage room and therefore needed
less plastering. Space 373 had a relatively homogenous deposit in comparison with Space 135
that appears to represent a well sorted dump or roomfill, rather than collapsed building
material (Farid 2009:15).

7
The hearth and ladderpost scars were uncovered during the 2010 season and have yet to be published in an
archive report. They are described through personal presence at site.

64
Figure 5.1 – Plan of Building 80. Plan Cordelia Hall (Farid 2009:13)

The northern part of the main room has a raised floor sector that could have been used as a
sitting- and sleeping area (pers. com. Roddy Regan). A further raised floor sector along the
eastern part of the room could contain burials, but this remains a conjecture due to the lack of
excavation. The southern room Space 135 does not appear to have any elevated floor sectors.

§ 5.3.7 – Paintings
Paintings, as well as moulded features and installations, are rarely found in the southern area
of the house, and large relief sculptures are most common on the west walls of main rooms. In
Building 1 there is a possible spatial and temporal link between geometric art and burial,
especially of younger people and children (Hodder and Cessford 2004:24).

According to Düring (2006:191) the fame of Çatalhöyük rests on; other than the sub-floor
burials, are the presence of wall paintings and moulded features and installations. The
imagery at the site is complicated to classify, as for instance the moulded features were also

65
painted; making the distinction between wall paintings and mouldings somewhat difficult to
draw.

In total there are listed 187 wall paintings in the Çatalhöyük database, of which 164 were
found during Mellaarts excavations in the 1960s. The paintings derive from 437 rooms and
include monochrome painted panels and many fragments that can not be adequately
understood. The 187 wall paintings can be subdivided into the following groups: There was
found altogether 59 wall panels, floor compartments, or other building elements painted in a
single monochrome colour. 21 paintings were of an indeterminate nature and could not be
classified due to bad preservation or being to small to make sense of. 84 of the remaining 107
wall paintings (78%) are predominantly of geometric motifs; these include a variety of
stylized hands, crosses and squares, honeycomb motifs, and ‗kilim‘ motifs8. 24 figurative
scenes were found; counting for 22% of all the identifiable non-monochrome paintings. These
figurative paintings are relatively famous in comparison to their small corpus of scenes. There
are two motives reoccurring in a number of scenes; often referred to as ‗vulture scenes‘ and
‗hunting scenes‘. The prior mentioned ‗vulture scenes‘ are vulture like –like birds pecking at
headless humans that are drawn on a much smaller scale. They are drawn in building VII.21,
VIII.8, and the following VII.8. (Mellaart 1967, pl. 46, 48, and 49; 1964:64,70). The ‗hunting
scenes‘ illustrate a multitude of humans wearing leopard skins interacting with wild animals;
such as bulls, stags and wild boar. The animals are represented on a much larger scale and are
surrounded by the human figures. This motive was found in the buildings F.V.1, IV.1, and
A.III.1. (Mellaart 1967:151, 170-176; 1962:59f). Other motives listed by Düring (2006:193)
are the city plan in building VII.14 (Mellaart 1964:55), an animal silhouette on the north wall
of IX.8/ÇRP.16 (Mellaart 1964:70), an abstract animal head in VIA.66 (Mellaart 1963:54),
birds in VIB.34 (Mellaart 1967:150), various human figures in VIA.27 (Mellaart 1967:150)
and IV.1 (Mellaart 1962:59f), stylised humans in VIA.66 (Mellaart 1963:54), goats in
building VII.44 (Mellaart 1966:176f), scenes with human and animals in A.III.1 and IV.A.1
(Mellaart 1963:49f), and a possible ‗splayed figure‘ (Mellaart 1964:42).

The distribution of these wall paintings seem partially clustered in both time and space
(Russell and Meece 2006). The ‗vulture scenes‘ are only found in the lower levels VIII-VI.

8
‘Kilim‘ motifs consist of triangular patterns superficially resembling tapestries in which complete wall panels
were painted in a coherent geometric design (Düring 2006:193). Mellaart argued that these wall paintings
represented actual ‗kilims‘: slit-tapestry weaves that were commonly produced at the site, and hung on pegs
along the walls (Mellaart 1967:152ff; 1984). Mellaarts use of analogies from recent Anatolian practices to the
distant past is controversial, and there is no archaeological evidence backing them.

66
‗Kilim‘, hands and honeycomb motives are generally found in levels VII-VI (‘kilim‘ also
occur in level VIII). The ‗hunting scenes‘ are only present in the upper levels V-III, so neither
‗vulture-‘ nor ‗hunting scenes‘ are present in level VI and are not produced simultaneously
(see Düring 2006, table 6.2). Stylised hands and honeycombs occur within a few
neighbouring buildings in the South Area. The ‗kilim‘ type of motif is more widespread, and
also occur in ‗outlying buildings‘ such as VIB.65 and VIA.50 (Düring 2006:194) The
‗hunting scenes‘ do not seem to cluster, but occur in various in all areas of the mound.

Some motives recur in later building sequences. Building VII.8 and VI.8 contain stylised
hands arranged in horizontal rows. Both building VII.1 and VI.1 contain ‗kilim‘ motifs, and
building VIII.8 and VII.8 contain ‗vulture scenes‘. It can be argued that some motifs might
have been associated with particular buildings.

180
160
140
120
100
80
60
40
20
0
Living rooms Ante rooms Undefined space

Table 5.2 - Location of paintings (Düring 2006)

Of the 187 paintings 166 (89%) were located in living rooms, 7 in ante rooms, and 14 in
undefined spaces. The paintings located in the living room are predominately located along
the north and eastern wall, both walls account for 72%. In many cases they occur on both the
eastern stretch of the north wall and the northern stretch of the east wall (Düring 2006).

Some have argued that wall paintings might have been associated with burial practices
(Hodder 1998b; Last 1998). This seems unlikely since of the 187 paintings only 51% (95)
were located in a building with a sub-floor burial. For instance; Building 2 had two wall

67
paintings, but no burials beneath any of its floors. ―It remains possible that some paintings
were applied as a part of a burial ceremony, but it is likely that they could be used to mark
other occasions and events as well‖ (Düring 2006:195).

At Çatalhöyük there is evidence for deliberate deposition of a range of items in different

contexts that show evidence of fragmentation, enchantment and accumulation. Essentially all
material at tell sites are deliberately deposited through human actions, were ―the tell itself
forming a single massive cultural artefact‖ (Cessford 2007c:543). Deliberate deposition
occurs in a wide range of housing contexts; from its construction, the occupational phase and
to its destruction. Materials represented are lithics, groundstone, pottery, clay balls, figurines,
architectural fragments, shell, worked and unworked animal and human bone. Material was
not just discarded as waste at the end of its use life, but often deliberately placed inside part of
the buildings. Building 80 had clay balls deliberately deposited in postholes (pers. com Roddy
Regan).

§ 5.3.8 – Moulded features

Plaster, faunal elements, and sometimes paint were often used to create vibrant three-
dimensional sculptures and installations classified as moulded features. The most known
features are moulded animal figures represented in profile, plastered animal heads with inset
horns, and benches and pillars with inset horns. Sometimes faunal elements were incorporated
in the fabric of walls, compartments or other features. Many of the reconstructed moulded
featured proposed by Mellaart are highly imaginative and seem to be based on little factual
evidence. A example was Mellaarts seemingly interpretation of wavy lines in the wall plaster
as stylised horns attached to moulded animal heads, of which no evidence has been found
(Mellaart 1964).

Different problems do occur when convincing documentation exists but for which the factual
basis and evidence for many reconstructed examples are not available, as is the case for the
cattle heads with onset horns. Animal heads may be reconstructed on basis of a vague scar in
the wall plaster that in theory could be interpreted in other ways (Düring 2006:196).

Together Mellaart excavations in the 1960s and the ÇRP list 149 moulded features and
installations attached to the walls. Of these 45 are documented in photographs and slides and
can be indentified with certainty. An additional 9 that can be identified in photographs, but

68
they are too fragmented to be certain of their original form. The remaining 95 do not have
documentation, apart from reconstruction drawings and references to the preliminary reports
and 1967 volume. 37 of the 45 are known from both excavations and are reliable enough to
count as evidence. I set the total number of moulded features to 186, based on total count
made by Düring including verified and unverified findings.

The main categories for moulded features are leopards of high relief, animals in profile with
in sunken relief, ‗splayed figures‘, moulded animal heads, embedded horns and installations,
round plastered protrusions containing faunal elements, and incorporated bones (Düring
2006:196).

Category (count) Description Location (unverified)

Leopards of high relief (4)
Animals in profile with in sunken relief (4)
‗Splayed figures‘ (8)
Moulded animal heads (81)
Embedded horns and installations (13)
Round plastered protrusions containing
10
faunal elements (15)
All leopards, in profile head twisted towards juxtaposed: VII.27, VII.44
the room, occasionally juxtaposed, often single: VI.44, VI.80
several layers, regularly repainted,
periodically refashioned, present for a
considerable period of time
Undefined animals, in profile, deep relief, VI.8, VII.8, IX.8/ÇRP.16
carved through older plaster or treated
differentially during plastering
Among the most famous, also known as ‗the VII.23, VII.31, VII.45, VIB.12, VI.8 (VII.1,
goddess motif‘, arms and legs extending VI.10, VI.7)
horizontally from the body and bending up
90 degrees for the lower limbs, invariably
mutilated, navel-like circular feature at
stomach level, no marked female organs
Plastered, with or without inset horns, may VI.7, VI.10, VI.14, VI.31, VIA.6 (X.1/
occur singly or in horizontal or vertical ÇRP.23, VII.31)
configurations, occasionally frequently
replastered and painted with geometrical
motifs9, present for a considerable period of
time, periodically refashioned
Horns embedded into walls, horns set into ÇRP.1, VII.19, VIB.70, VI.61, VIB.70,
ovens, horns set into benches, horns set into VI.10, VI.61 (ÇRP.44, VI.14, VIA.50,
loam pillars, VIA.66)
Applied to walls, plastered protrusions, VI.8, VI.10 (VII.1, VII.21, VII.35, VI.1)
often containing faunal elements, often
described as ‗breasts‘11, covering up animal
parts they enclose, part of the abandonment
process of a building12, faunal parts visible
during at least part of their use-life13

9
(Mellaart 1963, fig. 13)
10
The 1960s archives mention 30 protrusions in total, but only 15 have positive evidence (Düring 2006:198).
11
(Mellaart 1967; Hodder 1987; 1992:5)
12
(Russell and Meece 2006)
13
(Mellaart 1963:69, fig. 10)

69
Incorporated bones Faunal elements intentionally placed in -
fabric of walls, floors and features; difficult
to recognise in the archaeological
14
material ; often portraying dangerous
animals

Table 5.3 – Categories for moulded features (Düring 2006)

These features cluster in the levels VII-VI period of time at the South Area of Çatalhöyük,
where they all are represented. Taking a closer look at the lower levels X – VIII, they only
contain the leopard leopards of high relief (only in VIII) and moulded animal heads (only X).
None of these listed features can be dated to the Late Ceramic period, except a horn bench
found in level V (ÇRP.44). This feature concentration in level VII-VI do suggest that these
features were serialized, associated with a possible change in costums and worldview (Düring
2006:199).

There is some reoccurrence of similar features in a building and its successor, as one can find
leopards in both VII.44 and VI.44, and animal figure in deep relied on the north wall of VII.8
and VI.8. A moulded feature seems to have been present in a room for a considerable amount
of time. The leopards, animals in deep relief, ‗splayed‘ figurines, and plastered animal heads
have multiple plaster and painting episodes on them. This distinguishes the moulded features
from wall paintings; that were visible only for a short while before getting covered by later
plaster layers.

180
160
140
120
100
80
60
40
20
0
Living rooms Ante rooms Undefined space

Table 5.4 – Location of features and installations (Düring 2006)

14
Thus known from the ÇRP excavations.

70
As with the paintings the vast majority of the features and installations are located in the
living rooms: 170 (91%). 2 features are located in ante rooms and 14 undefined spaces. Their
orientation is concentrated along the west (23%), north (21%), and eastern (46%) walls, but
appears to be scarce in the south (9%)15. These do seem do follow a specific distributional
pattern: moulded animal heads occur predominantly on western walls, clay protrusions only
on eastern walls, benches with inset horns predominantly in the eastern walls, horned pillars
in the north-eastern area, and leopards and animals in sunken relief primary on north walls
(Düring 2006:201). Of the 137 living rooms used by Düring (2006:201), only 38 are reported
to have contained moulded features and/or installations (28%). Of these 38 only 18 do have
reliable evidence by photographs and slides to prove their former existence. Even in the levels
VII and VI, during which the mouldings were the most prominent, one can see that of the 73
living rooms found in these two levels only 30 (41%) are reported to contain moulded
features and/or installations. Almost half of them (16) can be sufficiently verified. At first it
may seem like these features are a curiosity, but moulded features have been removed prior to
a buildings deliberate destruction, making the count significantly lower in the archaeological
material at Çatalhöyük (Hodder 2007; Hodder and Cessford 2004; Cessford 2007a).

15
Calculations based on the 56 certified moulded features and installations (Figure 6.23 in Düring 2006:200).

71
Chapter VI: Discussion

In this chapter the main goal is to see how the archaeological material can be related to the
theoretical framework presented in this thesis. By comparing material culture and the
theoretical approaches presented, I will see how both Aşıklı Höyük and Çatalhöyük can be
seen in light of house symbolism and ancestor cult.

§ 6.1 – The house

As discussed earlier the term ―house‖ is a concept that has immanent cultural connotations,
charged with a meaning derived from our own conception of this social and physical
structure. Düring (Düring 2005, 2001, 2006), amongst others, argues the use of ‗building‘ or
‗structure‘ and ‗society‘ rather than ‗house‘ and ‗town‘. This is due to the work of Tilley
(1994) on the opposition between space/place (see table 6.1), were certain ideas are opposed
to each other, distinguishing spaces (etic) from places (emic). While space is seen as having
an etic quality (sterile, quantifiable, extension), place is seen as an emic one (local, specific,
meaningful) (Ingold 1993:154). ―The quality with the concepts of space and place is not so
much their content, but the manner in which they have been related to each other‖ (Düring
2006:31). Space is seen as untouched, tabula rasa, awaiting cultural signification,
transforming it to place (Tilley 1994).

Space Place
Extension Meaning
Quantity Quality
Container Medium
Universal Specific
Global Local
A-historical Biography
Abstract Experience and knowledge
Table 6.1 – Space/place opposition according to Tilley (1994) (Düring 2006:30)

In this thesis I use the term ―house‖ as more than just an empty space. I believe that I have
clarified the immanent cultural significance and implications of the word, giving it a defined

72
meaning in social life and society. In Hodder‘s The Leopard’s Tale (2006) both uses the
terms house and ‗town’ (Hodder emphasises that Çatalhöyük was not a town due to the lack
of public spaces, administrative buildings, elite quarters, or any specialised functional spaces
except those on the edge of the mound – p.95) in describing the settlement, and emphasises on
the autonomy of the house and their similarity to houses at contemporary sites in the Middle
East. I approach these terms in the same way as Hodder: avoiding making them into sterile
spaces, still being cautious padding them with baseless qualities.

73
§ 6.1.1 – Aşıklı Höyük

Plate 6.1 – Reconstructed (top) and remains (bottom) of houses at Aşıklı Höyük.
Observe how close the separate walls were built next to each other (lower right)
(picture: Kvæstad, 2010)

As mentioned in Chapter V one of the most remarkable features at Aşıklı Höyük is the
continuity in building sequence. Maintaining their characteristic throughout the centuries
implies that the design could not be easily changed. Although buildings were built right next
to one another, it was somehow not accepted to share walls between buildings. Keeping
houses separate entities may reflect the inhabitants view on the dichotomy private/public.
Assuming that the houses were not privately owned (Düring and Marciniak 2006) does imply

74
that the collective had some control inside the house, directly affecting the private sphere. The
thorough cleaning prior to the buildings dismantling does not leave enough material remains
giving us information on what might have happened inside the individual structures. The
clustering of buildings in neighbourhoods and community buildings may give an indication to
what social structure was present, but in lack of internal features or any objects that may give
an indication of ritual life makes it increasingly difficult to determine the values and ideals the
house may have possessed. If we accept Rapoport‘s premise that are thought before they are
built (1980:298), that dwellings are not made involuntarily, but build after an ideal, the
structural reproduction seen particularly at Aşıklı Höyük may refer to an worldview that
favour acts of repetition. As people reproduce, their dwellings do to. Still; humans duplicate,
while the dwellings replicate. This act of repetition may not refer to fertility, but to continuity.
As the hearth, in many societies seen as the centre of the household (Bourdieu 1990b; Hodder
2006, 1992; Bloch 1995; Bloch and Parry 1982), was reproduced and did not change position
within the building, I would agree with Hodder (1998a) on the historical dimension of the
building as a whole. The house could be seen as something constant and never changing. The
contrast between nature and culture; were nature is intermittent in terms of temperate, light
and seasonal climate, is opposed to the culture of the house – a safe haven from the elements
and a constant protector of its inhabitants. Often seen as the focal point of the household; the
hearth does not restrict itself to the transformation from raw to cooked, but it also gives a
controlled source of light and heat (Özbaşaran 1998). Here I would emphasize Hiller and
Hanson‘s (1984) argument for transpatial- and spatial solidarity. The inhabitants of Aşıklı
Höyük followed an identical pattern in their approach to building and maintenance of the
house, and still (as seen in the lower right picture in plate 6.1) remain spatially separated from
one another and the surrounding world. There was not a norm for how buildings should be
built, but the structural integrity of the predeceasing building was kept perfectly intact. In this
way a constant environment was kept over several generations, a product of society‘s
eagerness to maintain itself. The ‗deliberate‗ choice of conservatism made by the inhabitants
of Aşıklı Höyük was determined by social conventions and influenced by social strategies,
which are expressed particular in architecture, settlement pattern, and burial practices (Gérard
2002:106). It seems like the inhabitants did not give up their traditions and their houses for
hundreds of years, and the intramural burial tradition may also be accepted as an indication
for a conservative, fixed way of thinking – firmly relating to the ancestors (Duru 2002:172).

75
It is tempting to see the centre post, a feature included in the reconstruction of the house at
site (see upper right, plate 6.1), in the light of Lewis-Williams‘ (2004) axis mundi
interpretation. It will be unreasonable to apply this hypothesis to a material that is as scarce as
Aşıklı Höyük. Moulded features, incorporations and paintings, do not occur at Aşıklı Höyük.
Thus, the lack of material might hold symbolic connotations itself. Assuming that the house at
Aşıklı Höyük would have objects used inside for both religious and everyday (i.e. food
processing) practices, the absence of any objects might reflect on a practice of absolute
closure of the predecessing building. Seen in the light of rites de passage; as a building had to
be physically and ritually ‗closed‘, it would have been a part of a bigger scheme focusing on
the significance to remove the living in the process of abandonment of the building. Through
van Gennep‘s sub phases (Turner 1988) the cleansing of the building prior is abandonment
may in this way relate to the separation that comprises symbolic behaviour signifying the
buildings detachment. The building, if seen as a symbolic entity, gets removed from the
group, either in terms of the other structures surrounding it or relating to processes relating to
its immediate inhabitants, it may reflect to a ―ritual subject‖ that has none of attributes of the
past or coming state. Still this does not have an apparent affect the hearth itself, since it kept
its structural integrity and location from one sequence to another.

The rites de passage-approach presented is questionable in several ways, since it is not based
by any other evidence than the buildings (and their sequences) themselves. Projecting the
liminal persona (Turner 1988:6) on to the building as a further argument for a presence of
rites de passage may not be fruitful since the subject presented is a built structure. Still: this
ritual of closure, as here seen as the cleansing and refilling of the house, is only the first step
in building the following house. If one follows Turners argument that rites of passage is
immanent to the structure of the human psyche (1988:3), one also has to acknowledge its
universality. This generalisation may not acknowledge the full potential of the vast leap in
time and culture the present and the past, one may have to agree with During (2006) that the
rebuilding process seen at Aşıklı Höyük in more than social conservatism and a pure practical
solution.

76
§ 6.1.2 – Çatalhöyük

Plate 6.2 – Painted hands and bucrania with horns (installed on platform) from building
77 (picture: Dorthe Nistad, 2010)

Çatalhöyük has been more extensively excavated than Aşıklı Höyük, resulting in an uneven
amount of publications and researched material. I have therefore been recommended by Prof.
Özbaşaran (pers. com.) to avoid making a comparative study of the two. Indeed my objective
of this thesis is not to make a comparative analysis between the two sites, but to show some
nuances in the Neolithic material of Central Anatolia. At first sight the sites may have some
similarities: there is structural reproduction, and the entrances were (assumed at Aşıklı
Höyük) located on the roof of the building. A distinct difference between the two sites is the
outstanding inner features of Çatalhöyük: in my view underlining the importance of ritual and
symbolism in site. The Çatalhöyük house was in a constant transformational process. The
numerous replasterings occurring within a buildings life span (Matthews 2005; Matthews,
French, and Cutler 1996), as I have first hand experienced in building 80, could party be
explained in a functionalistic way. White walls make the room brighter; soot from the hearth
and the oven makes the white walls grey; more white plaster is needed (pers. com. Roddy
Regan). Yet the use and reuse of wall plaster, with the workload and energy consumption
considered, may also refer to the house being treated as a body (Carsten and Hugh-Jones
1995). The house gets repaired, treated and dressed just as a living entity. It may incorporate
the same ideals and thought as the humans, as it is built as a protector against the elements. To
a great extent one could argue that the core meaning of the house may not be so different at
Aşıklı Höyük and Çatalhöyük. There is no physical evidence for cultural contact between the
sites (pers. com. Mihriban Özbaşaran), the houses reflect and ideal that can be seen in the

77
whole region (Düring 2006). Much can be said on the similarities between the two sites I have
chosen, and the analysis made in terms of context and symbolism by Hodder (Hodder 2007;
Hodder and Cessford 2004; Hodder 1992) may to an extent be valid for both settlements. The
argument for rites de passage previously used at Aşıklı Höyük can to a great extent be used in
the context of Çatalhöyük: it is underlining the existence of the rites of passage, since the
closure of a building did not only involve the cleaning and deposit of certain objects, but also
the dismantling of some features as a part of the closing ritual. As some features were
retrieved from one building to the next (Hodder and Cessford 2004), one could argue for a
symbolic continuity as well as for continuity of the structures. If some elements were left
behind and some brought in to the next house, one could argue for the symbolic importance of
these objects. To use a familiar phrase; they could be used to ‗harden‘ the house (Bloch
1995). As the new house is built on top of the abandoned one, these features could be seen as
a part of legitimizing the new house, giving it a status or symbolic value accumulated from
the predeceasing structure. Previously I used the perspective presented by Carsten and Hugh-
Jones (1995:37) as the house being a ―dynamic entity‖ through a symbiosis between the
people that live in it and the materials used to build it. Materials are not only used to part
culture from nature, but also create permanence from impermanence. I argue fro the
homology between culture and permanence (and their negatives nature and impermanence),
implementing that the culture was secured by the internal features. Bringing previous features
into the new structure and using them could refer to an endeavour for permanence; an eager to
maintain culture and oppose nature. This is partly in opposition to Lewis-Williams (2004)
argument that the Çatalhöyük building partly was experienced as a limestone cave,
connecting the living to the underworld. In my thesis I have tried to argue for the
multivocality of the house may have, and how very different it can be perceived in
comparison to my own present cultural perception. Both at Aşıklı Höyük and Çatalhöyük one
can only guess what types of rituals and symbolism there is behind the material culture we
find at the given sites. What is certain is that it was most certainly very different from our
understanding of the world. I do agree with Hodder and Cessford (2004) that the construction
of social memory must have been a valuable part daily life, and that this in many ways was
connected to the house. Both Lewis-Williams (2004) and Eliade (1987) emphasise that it is
inside the given structure the axis mundi is located, even though they refer to respectively
shamanism and modern ritual buildings (i.e. temple, basilica, cathedral). The aim is not
necessarily to argue what happened inside the building, but that it happened inside the house.
In general I argue for the conclusion that ‗the house is housing more than shelter‘.

78
§ 6.2 – Ancestor cult
The ancestor cult is considerably more elaborated in Çatalhöyük than in Aşıklı Höyük. In
general Çatalhöyük has arguably a more representative collection of burials, since they
represent a broader spectre of locations and grave goods. The intramural sub-floor burial is
the most striking similarity between the two sites. Connecting the dead to the house by
burying them below the floor could be caused by several social and religious rites, assuring
both an afterlife for the dead and social verification by the people who bury them there
(Humphreys 1981; Metcalf and Huntington 1991).

§ 6.2.1 – Aşıklı Höyük

The burial material at Aşıklı Höyük is as scarce as the rest of the material remains at the site.
All burials were intramural, but with 70 burials in 400 rooms it is not possible to determine a
definite ritual pattern were the dead are connected to the house (Esin and Harmankaya 1999).
Esin and Harmankaya (1999) claim this is a sign for a privileged group of to be buried
intramural. Düring (2006) refers to the wide range of ages and the occurrence of both sexes to
be an indicator that this might be a ‗snapshot‘ of the population, and there might be more to
be found when excavating further down. If this shows to be valid, it might also refer to a
possible collective ownership of housing. Connecting the burials to Bloch and Parry‘s (1982)
concept of ‗good‘ and ‗bad‘ death is not possible due to the limited amount of burials. A
possible argument could be that the home, similar to the Lugbara (Middleton 1982), is where
the ‗good‘ death should take place. But due to the limited amount of burials divided amongst
the rooms (0.17 per room), the intramural burials are presently not representing the population
as a whole. It is questionable if all the rooms were occupied at once, and one could emphasise
the liminal aspect of both the burial and the house. How far they were connected is uncertain,
but a burial was always carved through the floor of the building; meaning that burial took
place after the structure was built.

55% of the skeletal material shows signs of burning, I would argue for a rite that reduces the
mourner‘s risk of contaminating the house by burning the skeletal remains. The use of fire as
a symbolic act of transformation may contribute to render harmless the body of the deceased,
limiting the symbolic pollution and reducing the risk of contaminating the living. Parker-
Pearson (2009:25) argues that the fear of the dead is a regular feature causing a liminal period

79
of separation prior to the rites of incorporation. Arguably is could be a purification ritual, but
it does not account for the remaining 45% of the skeletal remains that were left untreated by
fire. How far burial intramural burial is a connection to the house in terms of ownership is
questionable, since the dead are not only adults, but to a great extent also children. If it relates
to ownership, then children would play a transcendent role compared to their usual social
status. I argue that this rather resonates to the belonging to a house than general ownership or
ancestry. The modest grave goods found at refers to what is claimed to be an universal belief
of the immortality of the dead in all cultures (Lehmann and Myers 1997). How far this can
help us distinguish social status is uncertain, since the material is to a certain degree
homogenous and rather refers to a one general burial rite rather than specific rites connected
to the given social class. This also connects to Vernant (1981) work on the focus on the
individual. Most graves are individual, and some consist of woman and child, one could argue
that being placed in a communal grave was not an ideal. Although one might argue that only
certain people were selected to become an ancestor buried inside the house, it is not possible
to determine a pattern where the individual manifest itself in other ways than the intramural
burial of its corpus. There are no markers or other objects found that ma clearly indicate the
location of the burials inside the house, as one for instance have found at other sites in the
greater Anatolian area (e.g. Guerrero et al. 2009). To what extent death had on the social
structure is, as with so many other aspects of social life, not known due to the limited material
culture on site.

§ 6.2.2 – Çatalhöyük
Although the buildings were cleared in a similar manner as Aşıklı Höyük, the symbolic
imagery at Çatalhöyük is to a great extent intact. In general the whole site is bigger and more
elaborate and more works published than the on Aşıklı Höyük settlement, including wall
paintings, mouldings on interior wall surfaces and figurines. The minimum individual count
of burials is 685 individuals16 – almost ten times the Aşıklı Höyük material. The grave goods
is hence more varied and gives a better representation of the post mortem treatment of the
bodies and their social significance. The ‗typical‘ intramural sub-floor burial consisted of a
complete corpus buried below the house floor. Similar to Aşıklı Höyük the body was buried
while the house was occupied. The variations observed among the burials may indicate a

16
Please note that these numbers are based on the total amount until the 2005 season (Düring 2006)

80
complex social structure. Most burials do not contain any grave goods, bust some contain rich
assemblages of objects such as necklaces, pendants, rings, and belt hooks.

Interpreting a clear pattern of post mortem treatment is difficult. As some burials were
elaborate, and others were found deposited in midden areas, one could argue that there it
might have been connected to social status. The impact of death on society is as complex as
the material itself. The tension between the physical separateness of the deceased and the
individuals identification with society (Metcalf and Huntington 1991) may have resulted in
how the dead was treated post mortem, by the practice of disaggregational and reinstallational
phase (Hertz 1960). Even if secondary burial was exception, the retrieval of bones from sub-
floor graves does occur. As a ‗triumph over death‘, certain individuals had an effect on social
order through their skeletal remains, achieving a new social identity grafted into the sphere of
the living. The intramural burials may reveal some instance of liminality in terms of the few
exceptions found of secondary burial. Rites de passage, as portrayed by van Gennep (2004),
does seem to be a plausible essential part of the reinstallational phase of the secondary burial
at Çatalhöyük. The separational, liminal, and aggregational phase may be a plausible link to
understand how people used their dead inside their houses as a tool in transitional rites. As the
majority of the burials are located inside houses, the argument on ‗good‘ and ‗bad‘ death
(Bloch and Parry 1982) may be more reliable at Çatalhöyük due to the greater material. The
majority of burials are intramural and below the floors, indicating that this might be the ideal
place of burial. The burials found in the midden areas can on the other hand not directly be
described as ‗bad‘, since it is not the disposal of the deceased that is considered, but the time
and place of death itself. Middleton describes the ‗good‘ death amongst the Lugbara as one
occurring inside the home where the shrines of the ancestors are located. The placement of the
dead, both in Çatalhöyük and (to a certain extent) Aşıklı Höyük, is inside the house and under
the floor area interpreted as the place for sleeping. The act of sleeping next to the dead shows
the close the ties were to the ancestors.

Burials connected to transitional stages may show how the burial can be used in the
construction of a new house, such as the burials relating to the closure of Building 5 and the
following construction of Building 1. Transition seems to be a key element in the Çatalhöyük
society. The dead had a direct connection to the house; as 60 burials in Building 1 do indicate.
The dead seem to be ultimately connected to the house: perhaps not as former residents, but
as a collective having an ideal to be buried intramural and under the floor. To be incorporated
into the house could be a way to assure afterlife and gain the living within it.

81
In Anglo-Saxon burial rites children below the age of 2-3 years did not receive burial rites
since ―high child mortality may have prevented parents becoming emotionally attached to
their offspring until an age when it was considered that their chance for survival had risen‖
(Stoodley 2000:459). Children and infants (25%) seem to be as incorporated in the ritual
world as their adult counterparts (50%) at Çatalhöyük. The connection between death of
mother and child during labour in the burial is explainable due to natural causes, but one can
see that children themselves had their own place in the burial as an individual (e.g. below the
floor VII.9/B50). Lewis-Williams (2004) refers to the brick burial S.E.VIA.14, incorporating
a premature born child in a brick set in the wall. The child itself seems to be part of a rite as
an object rather than a person. Yet it belonged to the house and became a part of its structure,
benefiting the ritual life inside the house. Is seems that all inhabitants of Çatalhöyük were
equally represented in the symbolic and ritual sphere, and that social status did not depend on
age.

§ 6.3 – The hearth

Plate 6.3 – A hearth inside structure at Aşıklı Höyük (picture: Kvæstad, 2010)

82
The heath and/or the oven must to be considered as one of the main features of the household,
both in terms of practicality and rituality. The hearth arguably fulfilled the same purpose at
both Çatalhöyük and Aşıklı Höyük, even if it might have been a separation between food
processing and heat/light source at Çatalhöyük.

§ 6.3.1 – Aşıklı Höyük

The hearth in Aşıklı Höyük seem to accomplish both food preparation as well as serving as an
intramural source for light and heat (plate 6.3). Since the hearths do not follow ideal patterns
in connection to the settlement as a whole, but follows an internal reproductive ideal, one
might argue that there is not an external force that socially controlled the houses internal
features (Esin and Harmankaya 1999; Özbaşaran 1998). As almost half of all building units
contained a hearth, and the concentration is higher in single room than multiple room units. It
seems likely that the small rooms were more likely to be living quarters, hence playing a role
for the importance of the hearth as a medium for initiation and maintenance of social
relations. Yet again the rather scarce material at Aşıklı Höyük does limit the direct approach
from a theoretical level in terms of analysing the material remains. Still the presence and
reproduction of the hearth‘s themselves do imply that the social organisation was very much
reliant on this feature as a central element of the building, and its plastered base may indicate
that it was used and maintained with great care (Özbaşaran 1998).

§ 6.3.2 – Çatalhöyük
Çatalhöyük has two main types of fire installations (see plate 5.2), and the hearths are more
frequently constructed than the ovens. Reconstruction of the hearth was more frequent than of
the oven. I assume that since both were often present inside the living room, the hearth was
primarily used as a source for light and heat, while the oven might be connected to the
production of food. The symbolism of food production would hence be divided amongst the
two, with distinctive rites connected to either the hearth or the oven. Hearth (89%) and ovens
(79%) were mainly constructed inside living rooms, and together with the burials under the
floors must be seen at the centre for ritual activity confronting nature with culture.

The hearth and ovens follow a lenient pattern, reflecting a collective ideal of the internal order
based on a shared understanding of the private sphere. When knowing the position of the oven
or hearth, one can more or less guess where the other features of the living room are located

83
(pers. com. Roddy Regan). The hearth and ovens are as much social units as they are food
processing. The hearth is a particular focal point in many societies, in respect to rites of
continuity and passage. The Nuer show that there might be a homology between lineages,
entrance to huts and hearth; all interconnected through the house (Evans-Pritchard 1940). The
food processing southern area of the living room, with is overlooking internal positioning,
might reflect on the importance of this area. As the burials are more located to the north, there
seems to be an intention for separation between the two areas, nonetheless as they do coexist
inside the same space. How far one of them was considered ritually clean or pure is uncertain,
but it is clear that the resting place of the dead and the area for food processing might reflect
on an idea of the separation between the two.

84
Chapter VII: Concluding remarks

The house in the Central Anatolian Neolithic was both an arena for social life and ancestor
cult. The connection between houses and ancestors was not one solely consisting of
ownership and status. The material presented in this thesis shows that the ancestors impact on
the house in terms of how they got incorporated with its boundaries. At both settlements there
is a particular ideology of getting the ancestors‘ bodily remains inside the house as a last
resting place. I argue that this has to be seen in connection to the reproductive pattern of the
whole domestic sphere itself. The house can be seen as a living entity, and as its inhabitants
go through several transitional phases during their life, the house itself does take part in a
similar process. As people get born, grow older, and at the end pass away, it is always
connected to the house. In the presented ethnography I discussed how liminality affects the
given person and bizarre and unidentifiable situation. If the house is seen as a living organism
then it to will be a part of the same processes as the people inhabiting it. The house is in other
words becoming a part of a transformational process. Just as an inhabitant‘s life circle, the life
of house is marked by construction, maintenance and destruction. Its rebirth; the act of
rebuilding the structure, with its former features intact, may relate to the ancestors as a
symbol of fertility. The process closure reflects a ritual of transition, a ritual than incorporates
the past into present structure. The previous structure becomes a part of the new house, just as
the ancestor becomes a part of the house.

The house, perhaps most evident at Çatalhöyük, is harbouring such elaborate symbolism that
the whole meaning of it never will be fully comprehended. The ancestors, or at least their
bodily remains, played a crucial part inside the symbolic universe of house. As they were not
likely to be placed inside the hearth and oven area, it is likely that there might be a symbolic
opposition between the hearth – the centre of the household – and the ancestor – the link to
the past. I have used ethnographic material suggesting that the dead are concerned dangerous,
that they are a universal source of fear. Decomposition, contamination and impurity are
qualities projected onto the decaying corpse. These qualities are apparent not to be combined
with the qualities connected to the food producing hearth or oven, yet it was more favourable
to place the burial inside a house with a hearth.

There are apparent connections between the house, the hearth, and the burial. The ties that
bind them are strong; seen in the acts of reproducing them over an extended period of time.

85
The symbolic affiliations inside the house can be illuminated by a vast numbers of
ethnographic studies, manifesting the importance of the hearth in terms of fertility,
transformation and nourishment. The cosmology that is connected to the inner features of the
house may hardly be explained in other ways than referring to ethnographic material. The
links I made between present ethnography and the archaeological material from the Central
Anatolian Neolithic are intended to show possible aspects of the non-materialistic sides of
life. Although there are some apparent problems with the use of ethnographic sources, it is
inevitable in attempting to analyse the cognitive motive power behind the symbolism of
material culture. The links are made in terms of an attempt to reproduce a pan-human
symbolic structure, outlined by the theoretical framework used in this thesis, to illuminate the
archaeological material in terms of acts of ritual and symbolism.

86
Summary
Utgangspunktet mitt for denne masteroppgåva er å sjå korleis huset og forfedrekult
manifesterte seg sjølve på buplassane Aşıklı Höyük og Çatalhöyük i det sentral anatoliske
Neolittikum, avgrensa til periodane ECA II/III (8200-6200/6000 f.kr). Huset var her ein
sentrum for det daglege liv, samt ein hovudarena for både kult og rituell praksis.

Eg har argumentert for at huset i seg sjølve var eit symbol som gav referansar til
menneskekroppen. Sambandet mellom huset, forfedrane som vart gravlagde under husgolvet,
samt eldstadens kvalitetar, er så tydlege at ein må rekne med at det dreiar seg om eit symbolsk
univers som er tilknytta bygningen. Neolittikum i sentral Anatolia er kjend for sine
repeterande byggesekvensar, som reproduserte nesten identiske bygningar oppå kvarandre i
ein periode som strekk seg over fleire hundre år. Eg tolkar dette som ein skikk som vart
halden for å behalde forbindinga mellom huset som eit levande objekt, og personane som
budde i det. Det blei gjort ved å gravlegge forfedra innandørs, for å binde saman fortid og
nåtid. Omnen og dei gravene vart plassert på separate område inne i huset. Dei kunne ikkje
plassert på same areal, men samstundes blei ikkje dei ikkje plasserte i kvar sitt hus. Dette
illustrerar kor viktig forfedra var i huskonteksten, og at huset må bli tolka som meir enn berre
fire vegger under eit tak.

The motivation behind this thesis is to see how house symbolism and ancestor cult manifest
itself in the Central Anatolian Neolithic settlements of Aşıklı Höyük and Çatalhöyük, limited
to the period ECA II/III (8200-6200/6000 BC). The house is the centre in daily life as well as
a being the focal point for cult and ritual practices.

I have argued that the house itself was a symbol reflecting on the human body. The
connections between the house, the ancestors buried beneath its floors, and the
transformational qualities of the hearth, are so apparent that they might be perceived as a
symbolic cosmos within the built structure. The Central Anatolian Neolithic is marked by the
multiple building sequences, reproducing almost identical structures on top of each other over
several centuries. In my opinion this practice was used to maintain a connection between the
house as a living entity and the people inhabiting it, through the means of burying the
ancestors inside; connecting the past to the present. The hearth and the burials, located in
separate spaces inside the house, could on one hand not be located in the same area, yet
placed in the same building. This illustrates how interconnected the ancestor was to the house,
and how the house itself must be reflected on as more than just four walls with a roof.

87
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